Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress writes:
 > Thank you Mike. A few points:
 > 
 > (1) I had assumed that Ralph was suggesting that the ability to
 > request record metadata be elevated to a first-level parameter, but
 > I may have misunderstood so let's assume your interpretation.

Cool.

 > (2) The ability to retrieve a record's metadata according to a
 > specific metadata schema already exists.  You just retrieve that
 > record and name that schema in the record schema parameter
 > (granted, that doesn't allow you to get both the record data and
 > its metadata at the same time, you need two requests - not a big
 > hardship).

Ha!  I hadn't spotted that.  Nice observation.

 > So I agree with you that in this extension we are developing, the
 > ability to name a schema is overkill.

Good.

 > (3)
 > > I would also prefer that the metadata extension be self-contained,
 > > which means defining something like:
 > > &x-info-99-metadata=1
 > What does "1" signify here?

It just means "yes" or "true".  Maybe it would be more explicit to say:
     &x-info-99-metadata=true
?  Do we have any precedent for true/false values in SRU extension
parameters?

 > (4) I agree with Rob (actually with all three of you perhaps) that
 > this should not be overloaded onto the accept extension, which has
 > "accept" semantics, when what we are talking about is "request"
 > semantics.
 > 
 > So I think we're nearly in synch.

Looks that way!

 _/|_	 ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor    <[log in to unmask]>    http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  A simile is like a metaphor.  A metaphor is a simile with the
	 volume turned up.