Tim Bray, in A Web Interface for Web Publishing, outlined a quick version of a REST based Web Publishing interface using the not-Echo format. As Tim points out this is similar in spirit to what RESTLog does. To keep Forward Motion on this topic, I have posted a rough draft, in RFC format, of a similar publishing API using not-Echo. I have also created a discussion area on the wiki for this proposal.

There has been a great deal of forward motion in the Echo project today. Looks like the discussion about escaping HTML has come to a conclusion. Other areas that have settled seem to be Author and PermLinks. Things are looking very good for Echo, while at the same time I'm amazed at the resiliency of the wiki for hosting this kind of discussion. Full steam ahead.

I wonder if it would be efficient to use Bayesian methods to determine a documents encoding type? You know, for those pesky XML files that come in without an encoding type specified. It's certainly possible to match, say, known words to their byte patterns, and thus encodings. The question is why? Posted by Ziv Caspi on 2003-06-28

Quoted here for posterity: If you listen to some you'll hear hype that I control RSS. That's just ridiculous. I don't control RSS. I couldn't change it if I wanted to. [Dave Winer] If they want respect for the formats and protocols they implement, they must do RSS exactly as UserLand does. [Dave Winer] Something to reflect upon when people ask why we need a new format.

Every Echo entry needs two identifiers, which we'll call, for lack of better names 'post-id' and 'perma-link'. They need to be separate, and they need to be required. There is still a pretty heavy debate going on in the wiki and in Sam's blog about perma-link versus post-id. Now, I initially was for a single URI that operated as both a perma-link and as a unique id. I have since changed and I'm outlining here the compelling reasons for my change of heart.

I recently had the joy of working with TI's Code Composer Studio, a fully integrated IDE for developing firmware for the family of TI DSP's. Okay, maybe joy was the wrong word. Maybe frustration, or distinguished displeasure would be better phrases. The sad part is that none of the problems are technical. First Impressions Right out of the box, the system I got from TI was a disappointment. The system came with an EVM and a copy of Code Composer Studio.

PocketSOAP has a new logo, and I'm thrilled that Simon has chosen my submission. w00t!

Jon Udell has added an XPath search feature to the OSCOM slideshow. What makes it particularly intriguing is that both XML and XSL are loaded client side and all the querying and trasformations take place there. Makes me wonder if I could do Pamphlet as a web app and still use the XML interface. Which reminds me that I did receive from a reader some links for POST‘ing XML from forms using JavaScript.

Savant for a Day Stop the autoconf insanity! Why we need a new build system. Oh good, and I thought it was just me. Parenting's Effect on Usability Studies Yes, we are a different species. Ken responds to my recent rant on the Semantic Web. Yet another "What is RDF and the Semantic Web?"

There are moments when if people compromise something great can happen and if they don't the opportunity passes. [Dave Winer] That moment is now, something great is happening, the place it's happening is Sam's Wiki, and all I can is Wow. I'm 100% behind this kind of forward motion, and will work to add support for it into Aggie, Bulu, and Pamphlet. How do you see RESTlog fitting into the Echo framework?

Sole authorship, while looking good on a CV, is not what you want to see on a specification. It leads to discouraging conversations with Mr. Safe.

RSS 2.0 introduced the idea of a guid, an identifier that uniquely identifies an entry. When Sam called for a discussion of the essence of an entry, the permalink versus guid discussion began. The discussion has settled down and the concensus seems to be that each entry will be identified by a URI. If the URI has the scheme http: or https: then the identifier is also considered a permalink, i.

What comes back from the server once you POST a comment via the CommentAPI? That’s the question. Right now the specification says that the only required response is the HTTP status code. Currently there are two differing implementations. One returns a result code of 303 with a Location: header that points to a new URL. Another returns the number of comments for that item. Any other implementations I am missing?

The Anatomy of a Well Formed Log Entry Wiki is still chugging along, with more content being added at a very good rate. One of things that makes people nervous with usig a wiki is that multiple people could be trying to update the same page at the same time. Wiki has a very basic method of handling that, it looks at not only the new text you have changed, but the original text you started with.

I was doing a bit of Python at work and need to filter an array, all the values at the odd indexes into one array, all the one at the even indices into the other array. What I came up with is this: class everyother: """Helper class for picking out every other item when filtering an array.""" def __init__(self, start): self.start = start def next(self, a): self.start = not self.

You know what I want from Google? The ability to have concept grouping in the search results. Here’s how it would work: I search for a term like CVS. Now CVS has several different meanings, some of which are: It’s a drup store chain It’s short for Concurrent Versioning System It stands for Chorionic Villus Sampling, an early pregnancy test. I want Google to detect that these results fall into different categories, and I want the results grouped by cluster with the groups highlighted by some mechanism, for example, different background colors.

Sam has started a discussion of what, in the abstract, are the components of a weblog entry. This is a great idea for a starting point, by concentrating on the what, and not the how. However, I do have some of the same reservations that Tim Bray mentions: It’s almost physically painful for me to think about these things in the abstract, because I’m suspicious that if the people doing it won’t show me the bits on the wire, when they whip away the curtain I’m going to be looking at an API or object model or UML diagram.

I recently implemented per-item RSS feeds for comments on BitWorking.org. In the process had to decide what the channel level title, link and description should be. I settled on making them the contents of the original item that the comments were on. The whole situation does point to a striking symmetry in RSS that really isn’t supported by the current element naming conventions. That is, the major elements of channel (title, link, description) are the same as the major elements of item (title, link, description).

"Do not touch the tools." That was the last thing the nurse said as she walked out of the operating room. And she said it rather forcefully, as if from previous experience she had seen grown men, naked from the waist down, high on valium, wander around an operating room touching the surgical equipment. And yes, here I was, naked from the waist down, on valium, lying on an operating table, alone.

Chris Sells has a proposal for an extension to the CommentAPI. His proposal would add a new element to an RSS feed that would point to a per-item comments RSS feed. That’s probably not very clear, so go read his much more lucid description. It’s very cool. Tomorrow I’ll mark up the CommentAPI specification with the proposed new verbage. Meanwhile, drop comments here or on Chris’ site, because you know the drill, “speak now or …”