linuxaudio.org

Hi drew,
On Mon, 14 Jun 2010, drew Roberts wrote:
> On Sunday 13 June 2010 17:35:22 fons@kokkinizita.net wrote:

quoted text
>> You say these things 'are not there to convey meaning to a human'.

>> OK. Before it was stated that the software reading them is not

>> supposed to follow these links and get any information from them.

>

> Speaking from pretty much total ignorance here and guessing a lot...

>

> Perhaps the software does not get information by following the links and what

> it finds at the other end, but by the links themselves?

These are globally unique names (identifiers).  They have a

standard syntax that is easily parsed by a machine.  They

also have a syntax that allows you to have any manner of

strange versioning scheme without stepping on the toes of my

plugin.
Alternatives to this system are UUID/GUID's like:
     {C51D1AA2-DEE3-48D5-B5F0-E90F530F701D}

     {C7FFBB63-24B6-47D3-BB37-771B61A642F8}

     {E2BD858E-B848-4618-9FD6-54281B9B1ADB}

     {B17F7836-C46E-4477-B688-55A76073EF3D}
Or a rigidly-enforced naming scheme that everyone must

follow when making their LV2 plugin.  Something like:
     foomatic-eq_1.0.0-5_i386
Where everyone has to be careful about dashes, underscores,

dots, and how version numbers are handled.
Using URI's is preferred because they're both machine and

human readable... and it's /possible/ that the plugin author

will throw up a page at the end of the URL with some kind of

documentation.
For example:  XML namespace URI's are exactly the same.

The XHTML 1.0 namespace is 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'.

It identifies the rules about how the document may be

structured.  When parsing an XHTML doc, the application has

to already have support for that... becuase it won't get any

help by following the URL.  However, if a human follows the

URL, they'll get some pointer regarding XML namespaces from

the W3C.
>> I and assume that the same software is not capable of 'understanding'

quoted text
>> them spontaneously either, or with some help of the Holy Spirit.

>> So what purpose do these things have if they are not meant for a

>> human reader and irrelevant to any software ?

>

> Something I am interested in knowing now.

They are names for identifying a published component (be it

a plugin, host, RDF schema, etc.).  The host application has

to already have support for it.
Meanwhile, if a human stumbles on it, it can /possibly/

give them a few clues about where to look for help or

to find out who published it.
-gabriel

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