Re: Seiwald Q & A -- "GET for EDIT" cookies

Larry Masinter (masinter@parc.xerox.com)
Mon, 2 Sep 1996 23:20:48 PDT


> Sounds good, but do we ask that the versioning system be
> able to place this information in PNG files and Word
> documents as well as HTML files?  It might be more
> consistent to have this information available for all
> media types through a browser query.

> Embedding the checkout info in the document does have
> the great benefit that any authoring tool (not just the
> original) could be used to check it back in.

You know, it might very well be that the right conception of both
distributed authoring and versioning should be to make them work
independent of network protocol, by exchange of appropriate
_messages_. That is, rather than a "CHECKOUT" method, just use "POST"
with an appropriate "CHECKOUT" method. Rather than returning the data
as HTML and trying to embed the versioning information inside it,
return the data in a container (multpart/related comes to mind) that
has both the versioning information and also the related data.

I especially like the idea of a "checkin" data object that could work
with a MAILTO URL as well as an HTTP one.

Larry