Subject: RE: Common feature sets: scenarios, term

From: [email-masked] (Reynolds Franklin NRC/Boston)
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1999 10:57:03 -0500

>Scenarios:
>----------
>
>(S1) [per W3C CC/PP paper] providing a shorthand mechanism to capture the
>common characteristics of some identifiable device or system, which may
>then be augmented by additional information.  If such a feature set is
>considered an appropriate unit for caching, this can reduce the need to
>transfer *all* characteristics, only those that are different from some
>baseline set.
>
>(S2) [per <draft-ietf-fax-feature-schema-05>, Appendix B] providing a means
>to indicate standard feature sets.
>
>(S3) Providing an expression of corporate policy with respect to
>media capabilities.
>
>(S4) Consider a web server offering several variants of a resource, each
>having several features in common and a relatively small number of key
>differences.  It is desirable that the common features can be described
>just once, and the variants can simply describe their differences from that
>common set.
>

Practically speaking, I don't think I understand (S3). Why would anyone
want to provide a corporate policy with respect to media capabilities?
What would be a reasonable example of such a policy?

Franklin Reynolds
Nokia Research Center

---

From: [email-masked] (Reynolds Franklin NRC/Boston)
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1999 11:08:09 -0500

>Candidate functional requirements:
>----------------------------------
>
>(R1) Extension of capability expressions to allow "indirect references" to
>"common feature sets".
>
>(R2) Extension of capability expressions to allow "delegation" between
>expressions.
>
>(R3) Procedure for registration of tags to describe common feature sets.
>
>(R4) Interpretation of URIs used to denote common feature sets.
>
>(R5) Guidelines for profiling the use of (R1), (R2) in specific
>applications and/or protocols.
>
>
>------------
>Graham Klyne
>([email-masked])

I don't think I understand (R2).

I think someway to override a feature assertion within a common feature
set (override a default) is valuable.

I also think it is valuable to be able to dynamically change a single
feature assertion without retransmitting the entire feature set.

Franklin Reynolds

---

From: Graham Klyne <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 12:20:37 +0000

At 10:57 21/01/99 -0500, Reynolds Franklin NRC/Boston wrote:
[...]
>>(S3) Providing an expression of corporate policy with respect to
[...]
>What would be a reasonable example of such a policy?

OK, this needs clarifying:  I'll add something to my notes.

I am thinking of something like an Internet fax scenario, where an
organization may have a variety of internal Ifax receivers, and may wish to
publish some common level of capability that will be accepted (e.g. black
and white, grey scale but no colour; resolutions up to 200dpi). This might
be a way for dealing with "hunt group" problems within an organization.

I note that this is a scenario that is probably not relevant to HTTP-style
transfers.

#g

------------
Graham Klyne
([email-masked])

---

From: Graham Klyne <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 12:20:39 +0000

At 11:08 21/01/99 -0500, Reynolds Franklin NRC/Boston wrote:
[...]

[...]
>feature assertion without retransmitting the entire feature set.

I meant both of these things!  Maybe this is my peculiar view, but I see
these as being different applications of the same requirement, and was
trying to capture the requirement.  I'll clarify my notes.

Thanks.

#g

------------
Graham Klyne
([email-masked])

---

From: [email-masked] (Reynolds Franklin NRC/Boston)
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 10:17:09 -0500

I am still a little fuzzy on how this might work. I would hope that things like
printers and faxes will eventually be registered in some sort of directory
(perhaps LDAP or SLP) which supports attribute based queries. If true,
would this suggest that we consider mapping the algebra to a LDAP
query?

Franklin Reynolds
Nokia Research Center

 ----------
From: Graham Klyne
To: Reynolds Franklin (NRC/Boston)
Cc: conneg WG
Subject: RE: Common feature sets: scenarios, term
Date: Friday, January 22, 1999 12:20PM

[...]

#g

 ------------
Graham Klyne
([email-masked])