Re: [core] Some terminology questions for CoRAL

[Klaus Hartke <[e-mail]>]

Hi Jim,

I think when you're creating a topic, then you'll basically want to
say: "Hello server! Please create a new topic for me. The title of the
new topic should be 'This is a new topic'. There should also be a data
resource. I don't know the URI of that resource, but it should have
content-type 29."

"I don't know the URI of that resource" is literally the definition of
"null" in I-D.ietf-core-coral-01. So, when submitting a document to a
server, it could be put wherever the server is supposed to fill
something in, like the URI of the topic data resource or the blank
parts of a FETCH query.

That's the idea so far. I guess ambiguity arises when you want to be
able to both express "I want the link target to be a resource that I
don't know the URI of" and "I want you to fill in the link target".
For that, maybe using "null" and "undefined", respectively, would be a
good idea. The question is, do we need it?

The syntax for selectors and updated values in a PATCH request is an
open issue. We'll probably need to be able to say both "Please set the
link target to a resource that I don't know the URI of" and "Please
remove this link". We could distinguish between these two cases by
using "null" and "undefined" for the updated value, respectively...

Klaus