[Resending with minor corrections and to get tracker's attention and include
public-webapps]
I just wanted to float an outline of a not very baked idea for trying to solve
the "widget referencing" problem with a media-type/fragment identifer approach
- those IMO being the 'right' extension point in the web architecture to be
trying to use for this purpose - ie a frag id syntax to go with a new or
refined media-type specification for a packaging format. One vital requirement
for the packaging format is that it maintains media-types for the things that
the package contains so that the whole approach can nest.
This idea is inspired by (my half rememberings) of source routed email
addresses where % get re-written to @ and right hand domains get eaten off of
mail addresses so that say:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] progresively becomes:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ->
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ->
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
as the message is routed via example.com, somerelay.com, isp.com and finally
hp.com.
The approach below 'works' left to right stripping away the none fragment part
of a URI and rewriting the leftmost ! in the remaining fragment with a # as one
penetrates more deeply into a package structure.
I don't mean to suggest that this is all properly worked out - I may have
violated numerous character restrictions in URI syntax. But in principle I
think something like this could meet the widget addressing (and more general
thing within package addressing) problem entirely within fragID/media-type
space (which then leave it properly orthogonal to URI scheme).
Consider a package/containment structure as follow (where indentation
represents path depth and "n: [..]" represents named containment).
outer: [ catalog.xml
scripts
myScript.js
lib
myLib.lib
aLib.lib
nestedPackages
innerpkg: [
catalog.xml
scripts
nestedScript.js
deeperPkgs
moreNestedPkg: [
catalog.xml
scripts
deeplyNested.js
...
]
]
mypkg: [
catalog.xml
...
]
]
An external reference to some target XML in the most deeply nested catalog.xml
'file' would look like this:
scheme://<authority>/<path>/outer#/nestedPackages/innerpkg!/deeperPkgs/moreNestedPkg!/catalog.xml!targetXMLId
Once focus shifts inside the outer package, references are re-written by
replacing the leftmost ! with a # as follows:
- from within "outer" ->
/nestedPackages/innerpkg#/deeperPkgs/moreNestedPkg!/catalog.xml!targetXMLId
- from within "innerpkg" -> /deeperPkgs/moreNestedPkg#/catalog.xml!targetXMLId
- from within "moreNestedPkg" -> /catalog.xml#targetXMLId
Relative references within a package hierarchy work as expected.
Relative Referencing more deeply into the package structure is straight forward.
Relative referencing up the hierarchy is not covered by this approach, though
maybe another character could be reserved to act a bit like .. but at the
package hierarchy level as opposed to internal to the package - I suppose that
.. itself could be allowed to take you higher than the local package root - but
some detailed work would have to be put in to checking compatibility with the
normalisation of relative references in 3986.
The assumption here is that the package format also maintains media-type
information for each of the things that it contains that all the packages,
"outer", "innerpkg", "moreNestedPkg" and "mypkg" are marked with a media-type
that defines a fragment identifier syntax and re-write rules as illustrated
above.
Other characters than / and ! could be choosen as path and container separators
respective.
Could this or something like it meet your requirements? If not... which ones
does it fail to meet?
BR
Stuart
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[Traker: this is TAG ISSUE-61]
