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Among the outputs of the SWORD 3 project is a new proposed specification which, among other things, improved on the previous version by breaking it down into several smaller distinct specifications:
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- Extensions to ATOM and AtomPub
- Extensions to HTTP
- Packaging
- An application profile which demonstrates how to orchestrate these independent specifications (including HTTP and AtomPub) into the full SWORD standard.
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- The deposit response will be augmented with the new identifier types;
- The default manifest document will be specified as at least one extension to the specification. A default serialisation will be offered, but some mechanism will be provided to support different formats (e.g. content negotiation). The specification will allow for additional serialisations to provide their own extensions to the standard.
Again, why not content negotiation from the start, less of a headache for developers I would have thought?
I think this approach is right. In particular, I’d suggest that extensions to existing standards should be framed in such a way to be independent of SWORD, and be potentially useful to non-SWORD applications.
I’d also advocate making a clear distinction here between the specification of SWORD as an application, and the standard protocol elements upon which it is build (e.g. similar to a possible view of the web as an application built on URIs, HTTP, HTML, XML, etc.)