[oslc-core] Oslc-Core Digest, Vol 11, Issue 23

[Martin Nally]

I agree with what you wrote, but it doesn't seem to contradict what I said.
There is something slightly comic about this conversation. I think you
provided a very clever insight that both simplifies and generalizes the
concept of paging, and now you seem to be arguing against your own clever
idea. I was worried that it was conceptually difficult to define what it
means to return the first half (or third, or quarter) of an HTML
representation. Your insight is that you do not have to worry about that -
you can define pagination in terms of the underlying RDF resource. There
are some minor complexities in "paginating" an RDF resource that has blank
nodes - all triples that reference the same blank node need to appear on
the same "page" - but otherwise paginating an RDF resource is conceptually
trivial. Representing those pages is now well defined - all you need is a
valid HTML, JSON, RDF/XML, Turtle or other representation of the page,
which is itsefl a well-defined RDF resource. No special specification or
documentation is required. It's a very simple, elegant model - go to the
top of the class. A server that is paginating a resource for HTML
representation is free to define the pages in a way that is convenient for
HTML display, as you point out below.

Best regards, Martin

Martin Nally, IBM Fellow
CTO and VP, IBM Rational
tel: +1 (714)472-2690



>
> Martin,
>
> Although any resource may have multiple representations, some resources
> may only have one representation. In the case of paging, I think it makes

> sense to allow the page contents and breaks to depend on the
> representation initially selected. Different representations will differ
> in their compactness, e.g. one page of Turtle might take 10 pages of
HTML.
>
> Regards,
>
___________________________________________________________________________

>
> Arthur Ryman, PhD, DE
>
> Chief Architect, Project and Portfolio Management
> IBM Software, Rational
> Markham, ON, Canada | Office: 905-413-3077, Cell: 416-939-5063
>