Hey Bill,
Thanks for the detailed, well-justified and precise comments; this is a very helpful format to submit them in (hint, hint). Some selective feedback;
On Jan 30, 2005, at 7:58 AM, Bill de h�ra wrote:
Replace:
[[[
Note that the choice of any namespace prefix is arbitrary and not semantically significant.
]]]
with: "Note that the choice of any namespace prefix is arbitrary."
reason: semantically significant is redundant and/or not true depending on your processing .
I tend to disagree; we can choose to say that it's not significant if we don't want it to be, and even if it is redundant, it's good to make sure this often-misunderstood point gets home.
** 3.1.1 "type" Attribute
Replace:
[[[
If the value is "TEXT", the content of the Text construct MUST NOT contain child elements. Such text is intended to be presented to humans in a readable fashion. Thus, software MAY display it using normal text rendering techniques such as proportional fonts, white-space collapsing, and justification.
]]]
with:
"If the value is "TEXT", the content of the Text construct MUST NOT contain child elements. Such text is intended to be presented to humans in a readable fashion."
(I have more to say on @type later)
reason: we don't need to tell people what they can do with TEXT once we tell them what it is.
I could go either way on this; I tend to agree with you, but it's not a big deal.
** 3.5.1 Dereferencing Identity Constructs
[[[
... and it is suggested that the Identity construct be stored along with the associated resource.
]]]
problem: I didn't understand what that meant.
With you there, but I know this was a contentious point.
Replace:
[[[
Because of the risk of confusion between URIs that would be equivalent if dereferenced, the following normalization strategy is strongly encouraged when generating Identity constructs:
]]]
with:
"Because of the risk of confusion between URIs that would be equivalent if dereferenced, the following normalization strategy SHOULD be applied when generating Identity constructs:"
reason: change the passage a become a specification.
Consensus IIRC was to make this non-normative text, and that's where personally I'd like to see it stay.
** 4.1.1 The "version" Attribute
It bugged me that the version identifier has whitespace (some kind of personal neurosis no doubt).
Replace: [[[ the content of this attribute is unstructured text ]]]
with:
"the content of this attribute is unstructured text and is not intended for interpretation by software agents."
reason: it's evidently structured (I can read it) and I'm sure software will want to be abale to distinguish from another version as a string, but it's not intended to be interpreted with respect to another version for version control purposes.
I think we should wait for a definite direction WRT versioning and extensibility here.
** 4.20 The "atom:generator" Element
Replace:
[[[
The "atom:generator" element's content identifies the software agent used to generate a feed, for debugging and other purposes.
]]]
with:
"The "atom:generator" element's content identifies the software agent used to generate a feed."
reason: we don't to say what can be done with this metadata.
Doesn't seem harmful to give examples of what this might be used for; what if an 'e.g.' were inserted before 'for'?
** 5 Managing Feed State
proposal: I think this section can be dropped. Also, I'm not sure what Pace we have in the pipeline that are going to provide the content. (pace forthingcoming)
I had a proposal in e-mail, will put into a Pace.
** 6 Securing Atom Documents ** 10 Security Considerations
proposal: Perhaps we can move everything security related into section 10 and drop section 6. (pace forthingcoming)
Sounds like a good idea, but I don't feel strongly about it if anyone wants it the way it is.
Cheers,
-- Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/
