Re: [office-metadata] "Logical/abstract" vs. "physical" representation

[Michael Brauer - Sun Germany - ham02 - Hamburg <Michael.Brauer@Sun.COM>]

Bruce D'Arcus wrote:
> 
> On Mar 5, 2007, at 9:53 AM, Michael Brauer - Sun Germany - ham02 - 
> Hamburg wrote:
> 
>> Bruce D'Arcus wrote:
>>> I guess the only point of debate here would be that the "or location 
>>> of the package" option might be too fragile to be useful, breaking 
>>> object-subject references whenever a file path changes.
>>> E.g. we might require a URI for the document. Such a requirement 
>>> would only attach to 1.2 compliant applications I guess (ones that 
>>> support the basics of the new metadata system), which would not be 
>>> onerous.
>>
>> To be honest, I don't know whether one should really require that all 
>> documents get a base IRI different than the document location. I 
>> suggest we again leave it up the the implementations to provide such a 
>> base IRI when required.
> 
> The point is, for the metadata system, they are *always* required if we 
> want things to work reliably.

I'm not sure about this. If I simply safe a document on my hard drive, 
why do I need a different base IRI in this case then the one the 
document gets because it is located somewhere on my hard drive? All 
statements I make in this document using relative IRIs are in the first 
place statements about certain ODF objects in exactly that document.

And if I make a document accessible on a web server, why is another base 
IRI required than the HTTP URI the document gets anyway. If this is 
sufficient for the HTML case, why isn't it sufficient for the ODF case?

We have also to consider that a base IRI is applied to all realtive 
IRIs. That is, it may actually break non-metadata IRI. So, this feature 
has to be used with care.

So, I don't doubt that there are situations where one needs a different 
base URI than the document locations, but I think there are also 
situations where the document location is sufficient. So I would like to 
leave it to the application/users to decide whether whether such a base 
IRI is needed or not.

I hope this helps.

Michael



> 
> And we better well specify that the document/base URI needs to be stable 
> (which file paths are typically not) and globally unique, and give 
> developers some suggested options.
> 
> That wouldn't preclude them using a file path as the document URI, but 
> they would know why it's a bad idea at least.
> 
> Bruce


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Michael Brauer, Technical Architect Software Engineering
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