[microformats-discuss] REX! Re: REST-discuss list, naming

[Joe Gregorio]

On 10/21/05, Ryan Tomayko <rtomayko at gmail.com> wrote:
> There's actually a lot more going on here. Joe, if you get some time,
> run through these:
>
> http://microformats.org/wiki/duhper-proposal-preso
> (I think this is the latest, the url keeps changing)
>
> http://microformats.org/wiki/rest-brainstorming
>
> I've been watching from afar but the proposal is much more than just
> using XHTML w/ existing REST technique.  Briefly,

Yeah, I have concerns too if this is the proposal.

The biggest problem
is that HTML over HTTP is already RESTful. Every web page with a form
is already a self-descriptive hypertext document on how to compose
the request.

>   1. Constraining REST verbs to POST/GET

As for restricting to POST/GET, that's the wrong direction to be moving
in, just look at Web Forms 2.0[1] for what's coming in the next version
of HTML.

>   2. A system for constructing URLs.

There are already several systems for construction URLs,
for example the one included in
HTML, and OpenSearch[2].

>   3. Discovery through URL construction as opposed to hypermedia.

Hypertext as the engine of application state is an important
concept, one I've written an entire article on [3].

>   4. Limiting transfer representations to application/x-www-form-urlencoded

I'm not gonna really comment on that except to point out that
uploading a video encoded in application/x-www-form-urlencoded
is going to be a bit wasteful.

> I'd like to hear your feelings about some of these proposals as I have
> reservations about a few of them (especially #1, #2, #3, #4).

I've got my own ideas about how microformats intersect
with RESTful web services that I've outlined in [4],
in general seeing everything through my Atom colored
glasses.

[1] http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-forms/current-work/
[2] http://opensearch.a9.com/spec/opensearchquerysyntax/1.1/
[3] http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/04/06/restful.html
[4] http://bitworking.org/news/What_do_you_see_in_Web_2_0_

   -joe

--
Joe Gregorio        http://bitworking.org