The TAG asked me to review the site-meta draft:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-nottingham-site-meta-00
Comments below.
These are my personal comments and have not been reviewed by the TAG.
So, it is possible that some TAG members may disagree with them and/or
have additional comments.
Minor Comments
1. I think you realize that the use of site-meta as a suffix to the URI
steals a portion of the address space available for URIs and may be in
conflict with existing URIs that use ‘site-meta’ at the end. I presume
you have come to terms with this as a necessary evil.
2. It takes 2 requests to access a piece of metadata. This, too, I
presume you have come to terms with.
3. The text says that “Each "meta" element … MUST have a "rel" attribute containing a link relation.”
However, the third meta child in the example does not have a ‘rel’ attribute. Is this a typo?
<meta type="text/example">
foo = bar
baz = bat
</meta>
4. In the above example, I presume “foo = bar baz = bat” is the content of the metadata.
Is this meant to be free text or XML? A few words of explanation and/or a realistic example would be helpful.
More Serious Comments
5. The <metadata> element contains <meta> children that contain information about individual pieces of
metadata. But metadata about what? Is this metadata for the site as a whole or for some URI contained
on the site? Specifically, what is the subject of the “rel” attribute?
6. Since we are suggesting two mechanisms for accessing metadata: Link Header and site-meta, it seems to me
that we need to say something about the relationship between these mechanisms. Do we need both?
What are the usecases? Can a website support both mechanisms? I see no reason why it should not.
If site-meta is about the site as a whole, how can I get metadata about individual URIs on the site?
Do I use the link header mechanism for this?
7. If a website supports both the Link Header and the site-meta mechanisms, then the data obtained from
using these two mechanisms must be consistent. As it stands, the structure of the <meta> element and a
Link Header entry are a bit different. Should these be aligned?
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All the best, Ashok
