Theo van Veen writes:
 > > What would be really useful would be a mechanism for specifying,
 > > on a request-by-request basis, what particular additional
 > > information you're interested.  If only we'd thought to design
 > > such a mechanism!
 >
 > Clients might crash on unsollicited extraRecordData, there are only
 > a few extensions that would be a candidate and we didn't design the
 > mechanism, so let's forget it.

Er.  We _did_ design the mechanism.  I was being ironic.  You know,
like rain on your wedding day.  Or a free ride when you've already paid.

 > BTW, I was not proposing to put the price information in
 > extraRecordData. Actually I made a remark about the use of
 > extraRecordData for this purpose because the extraRecordData relies
 > so much on bilateral agreements and a priori knowledge. Price
 > information can be in an ONIX record or in a DC-alike recordSchema
 > "DC-with-prices".

But _all_ semantic interoperability relies on bilateral agreements!
That's the only way to know what _anything_ means.  Otherwise it's all
just bits on a wire.

 _/|_	 ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor    <[log in to unmask]>    http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "We tried making movies from a volume of stills" -- Peter Gabriel,
	 "Slowburn"