On 30 April 2010 16:42, Ed Summers <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 11:33 AM, Ross Singer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Just to clarify -- OpenURL 1.0 does not assume HTTP is being used.
>
> Oh, so that's the problem!
Yes! Exactly!
Poor old OpenURL 1.0 is abstracted to hell and back. The sad old
thing doesn't even know what transport it's running on (why? Because
Abstraction Is Good, not because anyone actually had any reason for
wanting to use a different transport than HTTP), and as a result it
can't assume it has, for example, the ability for the transport to
report errors.
It's a shame. I can see the reasons why the committee took it the way
they did, but the whole exercise has ended up smelling of architecture
astronautics. See this column if you're not familiar with the term,
it's a good read:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html
