RE: [Interwiki] Web Dav

[Dennis E. H. <den...@ac...>]

I am intrigued to see the variety of schemes that are supported by
WikiGateway, along with this exploration.  WikiMedia is one of my favorites
in terms of presentation controls and possible bliki
(blog+wiki+microcontent+...) foundation.

I can't offer anything around concrete experience other than to suggest
DeltaV may be tough and to wonder about the problems of abstraction clash
that may arise among WebDAV, Atom, etc.

When Alex says that what he wants to do is

> I want to be able to grep and cat, find and touch and cp and mv,
> use Emacs or vi as I please, etc.  As far as I know, WebDAV is 
> currently my better bet.

My question becomes, if we're talking about the server side, what is it that
is being sought that doesn't work with FTP and SSH, for example?  This
sounds a lot like (non-client) creation and administrative function, and it
is dealing with the server-side information architecture, storage
structures, etc.   That seems like WebDAV as HTTP-carried file-system
access.  Well, OK, but what's the gain in terms of wikiness?

[I'm beginning to sound to myself like one of those folks who doesn't
understand how a document management system is different than a database
system used to manage documents, when its about manifest/encapsulated
abstractions that have minimal leakage.]

I have some experiments that I want to try in this area, but they don't seem
to be any closer to the top of my job-jar stack than when I first observed
the InterWiki conversation, so I think I will shut up for now, again [;<).

 - Dennis

PS: One serious problem with WebDAV is its development prior to a clear
understanding of XML namespaces, and some cruft in the property and
extension model.  If Atom 1.0 allows embedding of content under other
schemas and namespaces than its own, which I assume it must somehow, I would
think the prospect of Interwiki-ness and some sort of content negotiation
under interchange might be easier to comprehend there. And I'm just
guessing.  [;<). 

-----Original Message-----
From: int...@li...
[mailto:int...@li...] On Behalf Of Bayle
Shanks
Sent: Sunday, August 07, 2005 02:47
To: InterWiki list
Subject: Re: [Interwiki] Web Dav

I am eager to hear about people's experiences implementing WebDAV and Atom.

I feel that WikiRPCInterface is the easiest interface for a wiki server
developer to add.

However, WikiRPCInterface is a wiki-specific protocol, and it's RPC, so
there is no interoperability with non-wiki-specific software. 

If you want general interoperability (and we do), then you want a general
standard, like WebDAV or Atom. 

I've asked for clarification about when to use Atom and when to use WebDAV
but it seems there is not a canonical answer:

http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/WebDav

(see also http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/WebDavVsAtom)


However, one answer was that Atom is more lightweight whereas WebDAV
supports more stuff (for example, locking).


My own feeling is that WebDAV may be the way to go. I am heavily influenced
by the possibility of someday moving to WebDAV+DeltaV (btw, Subversion
clients and servers sort of use WebDAV+DeltaV, and are planning to support
it more in the future; so we could partially interoperate with them if wiki
"repositories" also used
WebDAV+DeltaV). In other words, there is already a web-standard
protocol for doing what we want in an interoperable way, and it's
WebDAV+DeltaV. WikiRPCInterface is too wiki-specific, and Atom doesn't do
versioning.


However, I am worried that WebDAV(+DeltaV) will turn out to be too
heavyweight/difficult to implement, and that therefore few wiki
servers will implement it. But I don't have much experience
implementing WebDAV(+DeltaV) myself (like Alex, I was able to use a
library to do most of the WebDAV stuff for me when I used it in
WikiGateway).

On the other hand, perhaps the libraries are good enough that no one
will have problems with WebDAV.

Which is why I am interested to see what Alex (once he's done) and
Janne will have to say about their experiences implementing WebDAV. We
need more first-hand evidence about how hard (or how easy) it is to do
this.

-- bayle



On Thu, Aug 04, 2005 at 11:51:47PM +0200, Alex Schroeder wrote:
> Dennis E. Hamilton schrieb:
> > I was wondering if the Atom 1.0 API might fit better too, being closer
to an
> > application level for editing and posting content on a wiki.
> 
> Maybe -- but I don't want to implement an Atom client.  I want to be
> able to grep and cat, find and touch and cp and mv, use Emacs or vi as I
> please, etc.  As far as I know, WebDAV is currently my better bet.
> 
> Alex.
> 




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