Re: new iafa draft

[Larry Masinter <[e-mail]>]

> I've a feeling that all the URC/metadata efforts are going to hit this 
> problem where you want to keep things simple for new users but still 
> offer a reasonable complete set of attributes (or an upgrade path to 
> another format) for more advanced cataloguers.

I think the goal is to make URCs do for bibliographic data what HTML
did for documents: raise the least common denominator, while not
displacing the high end. 

Now you can expect almost anyone to deal with something in HTML across
platform, rather than ASCII text. On the other hand, some applications
will continue to need SGML or PDF or proprietary software for dealing
with more complex or specialized situations.

I think of IAFA filling the same role as gopher: it's good to get it
documented and it should play a role in defining the followon, too.