Folks,
I think that the hang-up, here, has to do with the term "specification".
Most of us expect such a beast to describe all of the syntax and semantics
details. That's what we usually produce, so that's what we expect.
For the purposes of Content-type registration,I suggest that we use a
rather looser definition. Namely, a "specification" may be all of the
detail we are used to OR it may be a a description of the content type,
sufficient for distinguishing it from all others and sufficient for
characterizing the agent responsible for creating or processing the named
object.
Hence, a content type of "msword" would need to say that the details are
specified by Microsoft, for their family of Word applications. A content
type of "wordperfect5.1" would need to say that the details are specified
by Novell/Wordperfect for the 5.1 version of their Wordperfect application.
(The above, of course, is supposed to be a couple of examples about scope
and style of the specification; I'm sure that all sorts of details need to
be different.)
Hence, the two purposes of such a 'specification' are a) to reserve the
name, and b) assign ownership of the associated object syntax and semantics
to a particular party. Delegation of authority is a time-honored activity
and I think this would be reasonable to administer for us.
Thoughts?
Dave
--------------------
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg Consulting Phone: +1 408 246 8253
675 Spruce Dr. Fax: +1 408 249 6205
Sunnyvale, CA 94086 Email:
dcrocker(_at_)mordor(_dot_)stanford(_dot_)edu