Link Behavior Questions

[Eric Dean Tribble <tribble>]

I'm going to write another message about standalone links which bears
on some of the following discussion.

   It is interesting that the ent
   structure which makes it eventually possible to separately endorse
   parts of documents should make it eventually possible to separately
   permit parts of documents (since, as far as the MDSE is concerned,
   both endorsements & permissions are just baskets).

Interesting.  I can see a couple possible problems, but I can also see
the path to a solution for them.  Neat.

      For reasons that I'll explain another day, I'd be happy to have 
      the links fall under the permissions control of the document, 
      but unhappy to see them fall under the version control of the 
      document. So permission control is a vote for embedded links, 
      version control is a vote for independent links. 

   I'm quite curious about the reasons.  Let's schedule "another day".
   Given a symmetrical front-end, which of the two documents would you
   want the permission control of the link to fall under?

Me too.  I will send another message about standalone links.

      1) We do a backfollow from B. How many links do we find?

   X in A1, X in A3, X in A4

I'll just insert a few pieces of the answers to the request.  They all
ignore filtering (perhaps appropriately).  If only A1 is endorsed,
then you'd only find the link in A1.  If these were consecutive states
of a Bert, then you'd find the most recent, A4.  If they are all
separate Berts that pass your filters, then you want to find all of
them because they could all be completely different.

      2) Eric runs a link to A3, with the link contained in document 
      D. How many sensors ring?

   Let's call this link link Z.

   Recorder Q rings (are there any other recorders yet?).  It rings
   because Z is from some data in A3, which is (I presume) data which is
   also in A1.

I've got a few ideas boucing around in my head for efficiently
filtering links based on their context, but I'm scared to try to work
out the semantics.

      DISCUSSION OF ANSWERS

      3) Though the permissions on the original document containing 
      the link no longer allow access, I would like to find 1 link 
      with 2 bert contexts, A3 and A4 (and perhaps A2, depending on 
      whether the reader has permission on it, of course).

   Nope.  You find one link with context A1, which you can't read.  I
   would argue that this is sensible and correct.  Of course, you can
   designate A3 or A4 as alternate contexts and follow the link into
   there, but the link itself doesn't designate these contexts.

This gets much more complicated when all the permissions are figured
in.  In thinking about it I noticed that event though you might still
be able to read the Stamp behind BertA1, the endorsements on the Bert
wouldn't show up on the Stamp.  I hadn't realized that previously.  

Another possibility is that frontends change the context of all
contained links when they make a new version of the document under a
new Bert.  This is gross, but would result in finding all three
primary contexts.

      4) I would like to have no link-activated-recorder rings go off 
      just because someone vcopied a document. In vcopying the document 
      containing a link, are we creating new links for every link embedded 
      in the document? This would set off a huge number of recorders 
      if someone embedded a link in a document that many people used 
      as a template. 

   Interesting.  I understand your concern.  I fear that the opposite
   decision may also have bad consequences.  Interesting.

Remember that recorders only look at new WORKS onto old material.  If
you just made a vcopy, then the new copy has no endorsements, so
doesn't set of any filters.  If you made a copy and separately
endorsed it, or included it in an endorsed document, then that is new
information and should properly show up on the recorder.  I think the
same think makes sense when we separately endorse links (and use
link-type filtering).

   I think links in template documents are a natural thing to do, but
   this of course weakens my position further.

We will have links in templates for formatting, links to style
objects, etc.  Also, consider the template review or comment document!
It might have a template link that you edit to point at the comment or
reviewed document.  I'm not advocating this, but it may make sense for
some things.

   Congratulations on being the first to think through these consequences
   of the design

I encourage you and anyone else to think these things through.  I
think MarkM has forgotten the last few weeks of designing this stuff,
however :-)

dean