Subject: Notation data language

From: David Shaw <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 17:51:50 -0500

I've been writing some code involving notation data (5.3.2.16 in
bis-03).  As I read it, the human-readable flag applies to the value
data of the name=value pair and not to the name data.

If I do read this correctly, I'd like to suggest a change in the line
"This note is text, a note from one person to another, and has no
meaning to software." to read "The value is text, a note from one
person...", etc, which would help make clear what the human readable
flag applies to.

David

-- 
David Shaw          |  Technical Lead
<[email-masked]>  |  Enterprise Content Delivery
617-250-3028        |  Akamai Technologies

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From: Jon Callas <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 14:26:18 -0800

You are right, the human-readable flag applies to the data, not the name.
I'll add in what you wanted, to make it clearer.

As for the name -- well, I have no idea.

I have an intuitive sense of what human readable means for the value. For
example, "I have read this document, but do not agree with much of its
content, call or email for long-winded details" is a fine human-readable
notation, and one of the purposes it's there for. I can even understand
that the semantic content of that note can be put in any arbitrary language
and encoded in whatever alphabets in unicode, and it's still "human
readable" even if that human better speak Esperanto.

But is "method://whatever/goes/in/a/uri" human-readable? Tim Berners-Lee
thinks not. Or thought not. The protocol we describe in 2440bis for names
doesn't make them human readable in some sense of the word, and in fact
clucks its tongue at a name like "Statement about what my signature means"
which is a *fine* human readable name to go along with the human readable
value.

My opinion is this: Pick your names with a small amount of wisdom. No
matter what you do, someone will be sure to tell you that you did the wrong
thing. A notation means what its creator wants it to mean. Unlike most
data, since this is contained in a signature, there's a known creator of
that data. Consequently,  the disambiguation we have in the standard is
really overkill. However, the reason for a notation is communication, and
there are two parties in communication. If you pick a name tag that someone
else will interpret differently than what you mean, then you have a
problem. That's why a small amount of wisdom is needed, and if you pick
some scheme like the one in 2440bis, or the backwards-domain scheme that
Java uses, fewer people will cluck their tongues at you than would if you
used a name like "a". And yet a name like "ReadMe" is pretty obvious, even
if squishy and non-standard. You're a bright guy, there are lots of
reasonable things to do. Pick one.

	Jon

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From: David Shaw <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 18:53:56 -0500

> readable" even if that human better speak Esperanto.

I'm not currently generating notations - the question arose from an
implementation choice on whether to print all names even if I could
not print all values.  If I was generating notations, I'd use the
2440bis method - it provides the happy accident of looking like an
email address so you can be contacted by someone who wants to add
support for the private tag to their implementation.

When I read the draft, I assumed human-readable meant that the data
was able to be shown to a human being without special processing.
Something close to "if I can printf() it, it's human readable" (of
course there is UTF8, but I think you get my drift).

David