> Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2002 16:36:31 -0400
> From: Ray Denenberg <[log in to unmask]>
>
> > > I thought the solution we agreed upon was that this and other
> > > features would be implicit in the sort key name.
... I don't remember agreeing any such thing.
> > Yes, but under duress :) Or more accurately, that it works if the
> > key only has one thing tacked on the end, but will we end up with
> > monsters like:
> >
> > <sortkey xsi:type="xsd:string">
> > AuthorLastNameCommaFirstNameAscendingCaseSensitiveMissingValueOmit
> > </sortkey>
Yes indeed, this is too awful to contemplate.
> No! "implicit" not "explicit".
>
> We haven't really said what these keys will look like, but one
> possibility is that your server would support keys: 'author1'
> defined as: Author: " Last name, first name" Ascending, Case
> Sensitive, Missing Value Omit\ 'author2': " Last name, first name"
> Descending.....
That's even worse! There's no rational way for a client to know what
to use.
> And that these are either well-known or discoverable via explain.
How? Why make new problems for Explain to solve when we could just as
easily just define this stuff properly? If we're going to have SRW
provide anything like "serious IR", we must surely avoid going down
this blind alley of mutually incompatible random semantics. ("On
_our_ server, author42 means sort by author's _surname_ descending and
case-insensitively.")
Please, please, can we _either_ define a proper hunk of XML that says
what we mean, simply and directly, like this:
<sortSpec>
<sortKey index="author" direction="descending" case="ignore"/>
<sortKey index="title"/ direction="ascending">
<sortKey index="subject"/ direction="descending" case="respect">
</sortSpec>
or define a simple, human-writable Common Sort Language, like this:
-author/i +title -subject/r
My personal preference is mildly in favour of the latter, but I will
be happy with either of these outcomes. What I _don't_ want to see is
a hybrid like this:
<sortSpec>
<sortKey index="-author/i"/>
<sortKey index="+title"/>
<sortKey index="-subject/r">
</sortSpec>
_/|_ _______________________________________________________________
/o ) \/ Mike Taylor <[log in to unmask]> www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\ "You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it
in the original Klingon." -- Klingon Programming Mantra
