On 19 January 2011 09:49, Scott Wilson <scott.bradley.wil...@gmail.com>wrote:
> I think its time to take a step backwards here. > > The "packaging problem" identified by the SWORD project was not that SWORD > or AtomPub have a problem with POSTing packaged content formats. > > The problem is that implementations of SWORD in the academic repositories > community use - needlessly, IMHO - diverse incompatible formats, especially > of metadata within a package. > > I don't see that adding any number of HTTP headers is going to improve > interoperability while this remains the case. If nothing else, I would > expect implementations to largely ignore any such headers sent by the client > and look inside the package to try and figure out what it is and if it can > support it. The headers just provide more opportunities for client error. > > I would suggest SWORD is completely agnostic on the subject of packaged > content formats, but that the SWORD implementation community make a > concerted effort to identify and support a common core of packaging and > metadata formats so that there is practical on-the-ground interoperability > with a reliable default format for client implementations to support > out-of-the-box. > > I want to agree on having a standard package, but there are issues with saying that. The most obvious is how that sits with the current use of SWORD. But there is also the situation that repositories are used in different ways, have different features (that reflect in their content) and contain a wide range of different materials. We could agree on and define a profile that works in the most general way for a set of use cases / content types. But that would still leave it up to us/others to define other profiles that would be used in those other scenarios. I don't think you can ever get away from a degree of content negotiation, but it doesn't necessarily need to be as complex as the scenarios outlined depending on what agreements you can have for common formats in common cases. G
