> > 1. Which relationship, next or prev, is used to specify a link > > backwards in time to an older archive. Mark Nottingham's > Feed History proposal used prev. > > Mark Pilgrim's XML.com article used next. > > I'd prefer that our use of 'prev' and 'next' be consistent > with other uses elsewhere, where 'next' traverses from the > current position to the one that *follows*, whether in time > or logical order. Consider the use of 'first/next/prev/last' > with chapters or sections rendered in HTML.
+1 "next" and "previous" are as James points out, orthogonal to ordering. The debate as to whether the next set goes backwards or forwards in time is not about the use of the terms "next" and "previous," it is about the default sort order of a result set. > Think too of Pepys' Diary. What would you consider the 'first' entry? > Would the 'first' entry be 1st January 1660, or would it be 16th > October 1662? Case and point. The answer to this question depends entirely upon the sort order. Another way to think about it: if I have a feed of my "popular" entries does "first" point to the least popular or most popular? You could argue both sides pretty effectively, but once you decide on the order, and then I put you are the beginning of the list and asked you, "please get me the next entry in the result set" I doubt anyone would have a hard time fulfilling my request. > > > 2. Are next and prev both needed in the spec if we only > require one of > > them to reconstruct the full history? > > Knowing that the most recently published archive won't likely > remain the most recently published archive, there will be use > cases where it's better to reconstruct the full history by > starting at the one end which is fixed. > Not much sense starting at the other end which is constandly shifting. -1 Yes, they are both needed. I would want 'next' and 'prev' to used to create pagination controls, where the user is in control of traversing the archive. > > > 3. Are the first/last relationships needed? > > See (2) above for 'first'. Meanwhile 'last' could be followed > by a user to jump ahead to the end of the set of archives to > see if the butler did it. > Who said 'first/next/prev/last' would only be used by machines? To be honest, I am less concerned about 'last' but I do like 'first' and for the sake of symmetry, I think we should support both. > > > 4. Is the order of the entries in a feed relevant to this proposal? > > not to this proposal. +1 > > 5. Is the issue of whether a feed is incremental or not (the > > fh:incremental > > element) relevant to this proposal? > > non-incremental feeds wouldn't be paged, by definition, would they? Why not? Why wouldn't I have a "Top 100 DVDs of All Time" broken out into 10 feeds of 10 entries each? Although one could say that the presence of 'next' and 'prev' links indicate that the feed is incremental, and the absence of those links indicates the feed is complete. > > 6. What to name the link relation that points to the active > feed document? > > subscribe, subscription, self, something else? > > 'subscribe' +1
