Re: new iafa draft

[Thomas Krichel <[e-mail]>]

  Jon "Jim'll" Knight writes:

> I think if we're going to get rid of variants (I assume that's what you 
> mean by version) then we might as well go the whole hog and have proper 
> heirarchical templates rather than a single flat file.

  Yes, that is a good point, but we do not have a resolution service
  for these templates yet. If the current effort to collect metadata
  using the current templates  has any meaning---I guess it does have
  some, otherwise we would not worry about it---the flat templates
  can be reasonably used to describe a resource, be it imprecise.

>  And once you've done that, its but a short step to SGML style markup...

  The problem that I forecast for the SGML is that it might be too difficult
  for the average archive provider to provide the info. 
  
> >   Abstract: This resource is about the sex life of snowpeople
> >   Part: Slides with main results in English
> >   Format: application/slideprocessor
> >   URL: snow.slide
> >   Part: Slides with main results in French
> >   Format: application/slideprocessor
> >   URL: neige.slide
> >   Format: application/video
> >   Part: Video of Snowpeople having sex, in French
> >   URL: sexedeneige.video
> >   Format: text/fortram
> >   Part: programme to compute increase in room temperature through
> >         sexual activity of snowpeople
> >   URL:  snowsextemper.for
> 
> How do you associate the URL and Format (and I guess other "variant" 
> style information) to the part name?  They don't seem to be in any 
> particular order and there's now no variant number holding the bits 
> together even if they're spread throughout the template.
 
  Yes, I guess it would be better to have such numbers. I left
  them out since I believed paf did not accept them. They could
  easily be introduced. Note that although the example is not 
  regular in the order, it neverthess gets an ordering across.

  Incidently when the URI group was split I read that Stu Weibel was
  charged with administering a group that would look into metadata
  encoding. Later I read from Stu that he simply wanted to make a 
  draft. Does anybody know what became out of that? 



  Thomas Krichel                               mailto:[e-mail]
                                  http://www.surrey.ac.uk/Economics/tkrichel