Re: [Scrollkeeper-devel] Better internationalization support

[Bob S. <bo...@sc...>]

> From: Dan Mueth <da...@ea...>
>
> So, we would have:
> 
> urn:x-omf1:organization:group:name:version:language:format
> 
> where organization will normally be a domain and group is whatever the
> coordinators for that domain choose (package, project, etc.)

I seem to have missed the introduction of :group: in
the URN.  Is that necessary to establishing a document
"name" part?  Or is it part of the metadata (in which case
shouldn't it be in the OMF metadata elements)?
 
> The part of this which will be used to identify a series of a document
> (different versions, formats, and languages) is:
> 
> urn:x-omf1:organization:group:name
> 
> Note that this means that a document cannot be moved between organizations
> or groups or it will lose its "identity". (eg. an organization changes its
> name, a document changes groups such as by being moved into a different
> package, etc. ) The versions before the move will belong to a different
> series from those versions after the move.  Fundamentally, the part of the
> URN which describes the series should never change, even if the old labels
> no longer accurately describe the document, because this part of the URN
> is being used to identify the document series.
> 
> So, we have a few choices here:
> 
> 1) Use the URN's as if they are metadata and change the URN if the
> organization, doc name, or doc group changes.  This undermines the purpose
> of having a document series identifier.  We could do it anyway and just
> live with a certain level of breakage in the system, but this does not
> seem like The Right Way.  

I agree, changing the URN of a specific version of a
document is The Wrong Way.  The purpose of URNs is to
be a permanent name for a specific document.  If you start
changing them, we couldn't call them URNs.
 
> 2) Try to enforce that once the document series portion of the URN is set,
> it should not be changed.  This is the behavior one expects from a
> document series identifier.  However, it seems odd since the URN looks
> like metadata and people would not want "incorrect" metadata.  Plus, most
> people will probably not realize they should not change this part and
> change it anyway.

You are probably right.  The URN isn't metadata, it is a
pointer to a document and its associated metadata.
According the URN RFCs, the OMF would be the ultimate
authority of how this namespace is to be interpreted.  But
I could see how someone who doesn't refer to the namespace
definition could be confused when they don't match.
 
> 3) Go back to using the uuidgen system (or some other system) for series
> id's.  Note that we may still use URN's for unique document identifiers.
> We would be going back to the original plan of having two identifiers: one
> for the doc series and one as a unique resource identifier.  If we do
> this, we would have to seperately evaluate whether URN's or uuidgen are
> better for the unique document identifiers.

I agree.  I don't think the document ID should try to
carry a series ID.  The principle purpose of a document ID
is to uniquely and permanently identify a particular
document.  Trying to force it to also function as a series ID
leads to the contradictions that Dan points out.

Dan's option #3 would make a series ID into another piece of
information that is associated with a document. 
That frees the URN name to track the current
organization for each version.

But I'm not clear where a series ID fits into the OMF
metadata DTD.  If I understand you correctly, the same
series ID would be applied to every version/language/format
of a document in its history, including when it changes
hands.  But the OMF <identifier> element is supposed to be
unique to each document.

I would propose instead using the OMF <relation> element,
with its url attribute pointing to a series ID.  By that I
mean define a seriesID using uuidgen as Dan suggests.  Then
the OMF metadata for each document includes

<relation url="thisseriesUUID" status="omf-series-id"/>

This defines a relationship between this document and the
series of which it is a part.  Then you could query an OMF
metadata collection to select all documents that share the
same relation element.  From that you could select specific
alternate version/language/format documents.

Would this be a correct usage of the <relation> element?
Would it meet the needs of a seriesID?

bobs
Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
Publications Architect                      Santa Cruz, CA  95060
Technical Publications                      voice: (831) 427-7796
The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.              fax:   (831) 429-1887
                                            email: bo...@sc...