> Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 11:15:11 -0400
> From: Ray Denenberg <[log in to unmask]>
>
> > My suggestion is simply this: that we gently encourage servers
> > which want to be useful to do so by using DC-like semantics for
> > unqualifed prefixes that it doesn't have its own meaning for.
>
> Sorry if I'm being too dense here but I still don't understand: are
> you suggesting this in lieu of or in addition to a dc prefix?
>
> If it's "in addition to" then I don't have a problem with the suggestion.

It is in addition to the explicit "dc" qualifier, yes.

However --

> Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 11:11:15 -0400
> From: "LeVan,Ralph" <[log in to unmask]>
>
> > If you want to make life nice for the poor user (or the poor
> > multi-casting search gateway) you'll guess that it probably meant
> > bib.title and go ahead on that basis.
>
> Sorry, but the ZIG has spent the last five or six years recovering
> from the problems caused when we originally did that.  Clients would
> sent me an Author search.  I didn't have an Author index, but I did
> have a Names index.  So I turned the Author search into a Name
> search because bad results are better than no results.

This is not analogous.  In CQL (as I am proposing it), you are welcome
to say exactly what you mean by including an explicit qualifier (e.g.
"dc.title", "heraldry.title").  The fuzziness only faults in if the
search deliberately leaves the door open for it.

> The ZIG played with the idea of semantic switches that would permit
> or forbid that kind of stuff and we have finally settled on flat
> forbidding it.

In fact, the ZIG settled on the complete and elegant fallback system
that is Access Points, FQs and SQs in the Attribute Architecture, but
since CQL has already made the decision to throw the AA out of the
window, we need something analogous.  Omitting an explicit prefix is
that analogous mechanism to my mind.

And if it's too fuzzy for your clients' liking: "don't do that, then".
(http://www.cnam.fr/Jargon/jargon.html?510)

 _/|_    _______________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor   <[log in to unmask]>   www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "The cladistic defintion of Aves is: an unimportant offshoot
         of the much cooler dinosaur family which somehow managed to
         survive the K/T boundry intact" -- Eric Lurio.