Distinction between "me" and "single" user? "Designated user"?

[Carol Nichols]

Hi everyone! I've been working on implementing the ALPS microblogging spec with http://rstat.us, and the idea of ALPS is really appealing to me for adding to an existing site. I'm enjoying it so far!

I am running into a bit of confusion between what I should be using in different situations in regards to the items that refer to a "single" user, "me", and the "designated user".

At first I thought "designated user" would always be the logged in user, but then I noticed:

> The phrase "designated user" means 1) the currently authenticated (logged-in) user; 2) a user identified via other state information (Cookies, etc.) or; 3) a user selected by some other means (following a link, etc.).

It's the conflation of the last one with the first two that's confusing me a bit, and perhaps I'm just misunderstanding. Does "a user selected by some other means (following a link, etc.)" mean when you're logged in as yourself but visit User A's profile page, on that page is the designated user you or "User A"? Or is this talking about logging in by following a link?

In rstat.us, we have a user profile page that shows the user's profile information as well as the messages they have posted (example: http://rstat.us/users/Carols10cents )

It seems clear to me that links to this page should include "user" in their @rel, but should the @rel also have "messages-me"?

> A reference to a list representation of all the messages posted by the designated user.

Then there's class "single":

> When this element is a descendent of DIV.id="users" it contains the user selected via a user link. SHOULD have a single LI.class="user" descendent element.

So on our user profile pages, it seems like we should have div#users ul.single li.user around the user profile information.

But what class should the ul have that's beneath div#messages for that user's messages? "single" is for a single update when under #messages (so a page like http://rstat.us/updates/4fdb32613127950001006689). Should it be "me"?

> When this element is a descendent of DIV.id="messages" it contains the list of messages posted by the designated user and MAY have one or more LI.class="message" descendent elements.

So if "me" applies in this case, should the link to a user's page also have @rel "user-me", which would make @rel "user" redundant? If "me" does not apply in this case (and only applies to the logged in user), what class should the #messages ul have in this case? I would almost expect a "messages-user" class, but that doesn't exist.

I hope this makes sense. Thank you for any insight or help.

Also, i just bought my ticket for REST Fest 2012 so I hope to meet up with some of you there!

-Carol