RE: [chairs] your input on OASIS functionality enhancements

["Drummond Reed" <drummond.reed@onename.com>]

Karl,

With the XRI TC voting on its 1.0 specification next week and the first
open source implementations of XRI resolvers already appearing, I can't
help but point out that OASIS should start considering using XRIs for
its persistent URI and other resource identification needs. There is
very strong synergy between URI and XRI technology (the latter is a
superset of the former), and for obvious reasons I would still recommend
URIs in the short term. But I believe OASIS would be wise to craft its
persistent URI solution with an eye to forwards-compatibility with XRIs,
which offer native support for persistence.

Myself, Gabe Wachob, Marc Lemaitre, Dave McAlpin, and others on the XRI
TC would be happy to work with you and OASIS staff and the Kavi team on
this design. Just let us know how you'd like to proceed.

=Drummond 

-----Original Message-----
From: Karl F. Best [mailto:karl.best@oasis-open.org]
Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 5:10 AM
To: Norman Walsh
Cc: Chairs OASIS; jamie.clark@oasis-open.org; jeff.lomas@oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [chairs] your input on OASIS functionality enhancements

Norm:

Thanks, that's exactly what we wanted to hear.

Solving the doc mgmt/persistent URL problem is at the top of our list. I
hope to have some preliminary design ideas to share with all of the
chairs in a few weeks.

We'll also look at your other concerns about Kavi and come up with a
solution for that. What, specifically, do you need to be able to edit on
the TC pages that you can't today?

-Karl



Norman Walsh wrote:
> / "Karl F. Best" <karl.best@oasis-open.org> was heard to say:
> | Last spring we rolled out the new collaborative tools from Kavi,
> | including membership roster management, balloting, email lists,
> | document repository, action items, etc.
>
> I remain utterly unimpressed. I will not go so far as to say that I
> think the new system is an unmitigated disaster, but it is, IMHO, just
> barely usable.
>
> The system is awkward, the website is cumbersome, and I think it has
> made the OASIS site less useful not only to TC members but also to the
> general public.
>
>  * There are parts chairs can't edit
>  * The list of documents presented to the public is still a flat
>    list lacking the hierarchy created by the chair or secretary
>  * There's no provision for navigation within the pages of the
>    of a single TC.
>
> As I have said before, the most significant bug is that it is
> impossible to publish documents with predictable URIs. I consider the
> site unusable for publishing important documents until this bug is
> fixed. (It works fine for meeting minutes and other things, but I
> cannot reliably publish specifications, schemas, or other documents
> that have internal URI references.)
>
> For example, I just published a working draft of the XML Catalogs
> specification for the Entity Resolution TC. The HTML version of that
> specification includes URIs for the original XML sources and a PDF
> version of the document.
>
> While I can upload all three documents,I cannot make the links work
> because I cannot predict what the URI for the XML or PDF versions will
> be when I am generating the HTML.
>
> And while we're talking about URIs, the URIs that Kavi creates really
> suck:
>
>
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/4952/wd-entity-xml-cat
alogs-1.0_2e.html
>
> Granted, URIs are technically opaque, but that URI doesn't even give
> me a hint about what committee created it.
>
> I'd happily go back to the days when I could have published:
>
>
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/entity/specs/wd-entity-xml-catalogs
-1.0_2e.html
>
> Nevermind functionality *enhancements*, the system still has an
> absolutely critical flaws.
>
>                                         Be seeing you,
>                                           norm
>


--
=================================================================
Karl F. Best
Vice President, OASIS
office  +1 978.667.5115 x206     mobile +1 978.761.1648
karl.best@oasis-open.org      http://www.oasis-open.org