Subject: FW: response to comment ...

From: "Lisa Dusseault" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2003 18:38:50 -0800

> From: "Julian Reschke" <[email-masked]>
> Date: Tue Mar 4, 2003  1:17:18  PM US/Pacific
> Subject: RE: bind draft issues
[snip]
> Yes. Clearly they aren't. RFC2518 never talked about "URL properties".
> DAV:displayname is a property of the resource, and therefore it must
be
> independant of the URL through which the property is accessed.
>
> BTW: I'm not aware of implementations that actually support multiple
> bindings and show this behaviour.

Here's an example.  WFS used to support bindings, but we pulled them out
because they were hard to maintain and nobody was using them, and the
standard wasn't going anywhere at the time. 

Now, as then, WFS sets the display name to be the base name from the
path part of the URL.  So for us resourcename is a property which is
constant as long as the resource's URL is constant, and changes when the
URL changes.  I don't know if we'd change this if we did support
bindings.

I have some vague memory that some Microsoft WebDAV client expects the
resourcename to change to be equivalent to the last path segment of the
URL, and that client behaves badly if that's not true.  However, I'm
afraid I can't substantiate this as I've forgotten all the details.
Does that ring a bell for anybody else?

Lisa

---

From: "Julian Reschke" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 09:38:17 +0100

> From: [email-masked]
> [mailto:[email-masked]]On Behalf Of Lisa Dusseault
> Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 3:39 AM
> To: Webdav WG
> Subject: FW: response to comment ...
>
>
>
>
>

Well, I consider this a bug. It's not supported by the spec.

> Does that ring a bell for anybody else?

The Webfolder client indeed displays the displayname instead of the last URI
segment when present (and even uses in in the "href" column instead of the
real URI). This works well when

- the last part of the displayname consistently is identical to the last URI
segment (mod. URI escaping) (IIS)
- DAV:displayname is just a dead property that most of the time isn't set
(moddav)

The easiest fix is not to return a DAV:displayname when there is no specific
one. Apache/moddav shows that this works, and I'm not aware of any Microsoft
client failing in this case.

If we consider this an interop problem, we should deprecate DAV:displayname
(because that's the only way to "fix" the webfolder client) and come up with
a new property with the same semantics.

Julian

--
<green/>bytes GmbH -- http://www.greenbytes.de -- tel:+492512807760

---

From: "Lisa Dusseault" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 08:06:23 -0800

> Well, I consider this a bug. It's not supported by the spec.

I've always thought this was against the spirit of the WebDAV
specification. However, I don't think it can be considered a bug.
RFC2518 doesn't require displayname to have a particular value, or to be
writable, or to be empty.

> - the last part of the displayname consistently is identical 
> to the last URI segment (mod. URI escaping) (IIS)

Yeah, this is what WFS does, I believe we consciously mimicked IIS in
order to work well with Web Folders.

> - DAV:displayname is just a dead property that most of the 
> time isn't set (moddav)

Do you know what happens when it is set to some value other than the
last URI segment?  Does any client get confused when the URI ends in
"index.html" but the displayname shows "Index of files here"?

More interestingly, what happens if there are two resources in a
collection which have the same resourcename -- does this confuse the
client deeply?

> a new property with the same semantics.

That might be cool. Exchange 2000 uses a "subject" property across many
types of resources (emails, appointments, maybe even Office documents)
to serve as a truly user-displayable value or "friendly name".  Its
value is not unique within a collection, so multiple emails in the same
folder can have the subject "RE: response to comment ...".  And it is
writable, not protected, yet it is given a default value selected by the
server when the resource is created, so that a collection doesn't show a
lot of blank friendly names.  

Lisa

---

From: "Julian Reschke" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 17:16:13 +0100

> Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 5:06 PM
> To: 'Julian Reschke'; 'Webdav WG'
> Subject: RE: response to comment ...
>
>
>

Correct. But it says that properties are on resources, not on URLs:

"Properties are pieces of data that describe the state of a resource.
Properties are data about data."

> "index.html" but the displayname shows "Index of files here"?

Not that I'm aware of.

> collection which have the same resourcename -- does this confuse the

Not the (webfolder) client, but certainly the user :-)

> lot of blank friendly names.

OK. Maybe we should investigate that.

Julian