I've just started speccing out some thoughts on how document references (files, URLs, URIs, ...?) might be improved. A sort of api / multiple-attribute interface strikes me as useful:
1. Meaningful titles / filenames.
2. A content hash. Not exactly human-friendly... I'd prefer something shorter to longer, though there's the collisions problem. Still thinking on this. Could tie into VCS (git, Hg, etc.)
3. Various standard metadata: author(s), editor(s), publisher(s), and their relation(s) to the doc. See various bibliographic or MARC 21 formats.
5. Classification schema. Here with time I find that working with extant rather than de novo or ad hoc schema is most likely preferable. Dewey Decimal is apparently more logical than LoCCS, but the Library of Congress classification is nonproprietary. That may well be what makes it win out.
6. Workflow indicators. Unread, read, deep-archive, to-process, etc.
7. Reputation and ratings. Associated with works, authors, other contributors (editors, fact-checkers, etc.), publishers. Some form of distributed assessment here would be useful.
The question is how to make these visible. My thought is to treat the parameters as, essentially, search. It doesn't matter what name you use, so long as the set characteristics is unique or determinable. E.g., returning 3 items would allow me to manually determine which I'm interested in, returning 300 would make that difficult, returning 3,000 would probably require some programmatic determination (or further specification).
A URL scheme, say, URI:/au=clarke&dat=lt:1980&ti:=imperial&ti=earth ... could, say, return Arthur C. Clarke's Imperial Earth.
A filesystem / virtual filesystem approach might work somewhat similarly locally, either from a CLI or graphical approach. I'm thinking of how that might work....
I've just started speccing out some thoughts on how document references (files, URLs, URIs, ...?) might be improved. A sort of api / multiple-attribute interface strikes me as useful:
1. Meaningful titles / filenames.
2. A content hash. Not exactly human-friendly... I'd prefer something shorter to longer, though there's the collisions problem. Still thinking on this. Could tie into VCS (git, Hg, etc.)
3. Various standard metadata: author(s), editor(s), publisher(s), and their relation(s) to the doc. See various bibliographic or MARC 21 formats.
4. Dates: Initiated, published, modified, accessed, read date(s).
5. Classification schema. Here with time I find that working with extant rather than de novo or ad hoc schema is most likely preferable. Dewey Decimal is apparently more logical than LoCCS, but the Library of Congress classification is nonproprietary. That may well be what makes it win out.
6. Workflow indicators. Unread, read, deep-archive, to-process, etc.
7. Reputation and ratings. Associated with works, authors, other contributors (editors, fact-checkers, etc.), publishers. Some form of distributed assessment here would be useful.
The question is how to make these visible. My thought is to treat the parameters as, essentially, search. It doesn't matter what name you use, so long as the set characteristics is unique or determinable. E.g., returning 3 items would allow me to manually determine which I'm interested in, returning 300 would make that difficult, returning 3,000 would probably require some programmatic determination (or further specification).
A URL scheme, say, URI:/au=clarke&dat=lt:1980&ti:=imperial&ti=earth ... could, say, return Arthur C. Clarke's Imperial Earth.
A filesystem / virtual filesystem approach might work somewhat similarly locally, either from a CLI or graphical approach. I'm thinking of how that might work....
Very early stages.