Namespacing and Standards
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Michael Bleigh
Apr 19, 2010, 8:30:01 AM4/19/10
to twitter-meta
My idea with starting this group was to allow for the emergence of
community standards such that we could get a running start. But here's
a problem: what's a way to ensure that a given namespace is actually
conformant to a standard? Should standardized namespaces be emphasized
by simple convention or officialized through some kind of namespace
prefix?
For example, say we have a "media" standard that's meant to describe
media links in a certain way. If we simply use the "media" namespace,
non-conforming clients are very likely to also use the namespace
because it's simply an obvious keyword that has many uses.
So what do we do? One thought I've had would be to establish a curated
wiki-like destination for annotation standards and utilize URIs from
that site for the namespace, similar to how Attribute Exchange for
OpenID works. So a namespace of http://somestandardssite.org/x/media
would be used to specify absolutely that they're trying to use the
standards-compliant media type.
Of course another option is just some kind of agreed upon prefix (such
as "as:media" for AnnotationStandard Media). What do you think?
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community standards such that we could get a running start. But here's
a problem: what's a way to ensure that a given namespace is actually
conformant to a standard? Should standardized namespaces be emphasized
by simple convention or officialized through some kind of namespace
prefix?
For example, say we have a "media" standard that's meant to describe
media links in a certain way. If we simply use the "media" namespace,
non-conforming clients are very likely to also use the namespace
because it's simply an obvious keyword that has many uses.
So what do we do? One thought I've had would be to establish a curated
wiki-like destination for annotation standards and utilize URIs from
that site for the namespace, similar to how Attribute Exchange for
OpenID works. So a namespace of http://somestandardssite.org/x/media
would be used to specify absolutely that they're trying to use the
standards-compliant media type.
Of course another option is just some kind of agreed upon prefix (such
as "as:media" for AnnotationStandard Media). What do you think?
--
Subscription settings: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-meta/subscribe?hl=en
Jacob Harris
Apr 19, 2010, 8:34:45 AM4/19/10
to twitte...@googlegroups.com
I don't think we can ever really guarantee that a standard is complied with. I think the best clients might be able to do is to settle for a duck-typed model where we look for certain namespace:key values, but be prepapared should any of them be missing. That said, I do think a wiki or something similar is essential, if only so tweet producers (like twitpic, news feeds, etc.) and twitter clients have a common place to look at annotation standards and hopefully go with what exists before they define their own. This is something that should be there before annotations launch ideally...
Jacob
Jacob
Justyn
Apr 19, 2010, 8:41:43 AM4/19/10
to twitter-meta
In order for this to be as useful as possible, I'm hoping Twitter's
platform team will help spearhead the standards. If nothing else,
listing standards for commonly requested annotation types or those
that become widely used will be helpful. Thousands of different
formats will only ensure that none of them are widely used and
increase the resources we need to make use of the ones we want. While
I think it's great that the innovation come from the community,
someone needs to put some organization to it. Maybe I'm wrong.
On Apr 19, 7:34 am, Jacob Harris <harrisj.h...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think we can ever really guarantee that a standard is complied with. I think the best clients might be able to do is to settle for a duck-typed model where we look for certain namespace:key values, but be prepapared should any of them be missing. That said, I do think a wiki or something similar is essential, if only so tweet producers (like twitpic, news feeds, etc.) and twitter clients have a common place to look at annotation standards and hopefully go with what exists before they define their own. This is something that should be there before annotations launch ideally...
>
> Jacob
>
> On Apr 19, 2010, at 8:30 AM, Michael Bleigh wrote:
>
> > My idea with starting this group was to allow for the emergence of
> > community standards such that we could get a running start. But here's
> > a problem: what's a way to ensure that a given namespace is actually
> > conformant to a standard? Should standardized namespaces be emphasized
> > by simple convention or officialized through some kind of namespace
> > prefix?
>
> > For example, say we have a "media" standard that's meant to describe
> > media links in a certain way. If we simply use the "media" namespace,
> > non-conforming clients are very likely to also use the namespace
> > because it's simply an obvious keyword that has many uses.
>
> > So what do we do? One thought I've had would be to establish a curated
> > wiki-like destination for annotation standards and utilize URIs from
> > that site for the namespace, similar to how Attribute Exchange for
> > OpenID works. So a namespace ofhttp://somestandardssite.org/x/media
platform team will help spearhead the standards. If nothing else,
listing standards for commonly requested annotation types or those
that become widely used will be helpful. Thousands of different
formats will only ensure that none of them are widely used and
increase the resources we need to make use of the ones we want. While
I think it's great that the innovation come from the community,
someone needs to put some organization to it. Maybe I'm wrong.
On Apr 19, 7:34 am, Jacob Harris <harrisj.h...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think we can ever really guarantee that a standard is complied with. I think the best clients might be able to do is to settle for a duck-typed model where we look for certain namespace:key values, but be prepapared should any of them be missing. That said, I do think a wiki or something similar is essential, if only so tweet producers (like twitpic, news feeds, etc.) and twitter clients have a common place to look at annotation standards and hopefully go with what exists before they define their own. This is something that should be there before annotations launch ideally...
>
> Jacob
>
> On Apr 19, 2010, at 8:30 AM, Michael Bleigh wrote:
>
> > My idea with starting this group was to allow for the emergence of
> > community standards such that we could get a running start. But here's
> > a problem: what's a way to ensure that a given namespace is actually
> > conformant to a standard? Should standardized namespaces be emphasized
> > by simple convention or officialized through some kind of namespace
> > prefix?
>
> > For example, say we have a "media" standard that's meant to describe
> > media links in a certain way. If we simply use the "media" namespace,
> > non-conforming clients are very likely to also use the namespace
> > because it's simply an obvious keyword that has many uses.
>
> > So what do we do? One thought I've had would be to establish a curated
> > wiki-like destination for annotation standards and utilize URIs from
> > that site for the namespace, similar to how Attribute Exchange for
Michael Bleigh
Apr 19, 2010, 8:43:10 AM4/19/10
to twitte...@googlegroups.com
I agree that there are no guarantees, but it'd be nice to at least know that someone's TRYING to conform to a standard in an easy way. What if instead of doing it at the namespace level it were an additional key? So if I have a "media" namespace I have a "format" or similar key that is set to the structure wiki page instead. This way we keep readability of annotations while providing assistance for those trying to parse out meaning from them.
Jacob Harris
Apr 19, 2010, 9:59:32 AM4/19/10
to twitte...@googlegroups.com
I think the bind we're in here is that we don't know how big the. Annotation payload will be allowed to get, so we might not be able to get an additional field. That said, it doesn't mean we just give up and cry. I agree with both of you that the best option would be a "official" wiki fleshed out with some standards at the annotations launch. It would be great if Twitter were behind that.
Jacob
Jacob
From: Michael Bleigh <mbl...@mbleigh.com>
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 08:43:10 -0400
Subject: Re: Namespacing and Standards
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