Comments on: whois++ and IAFA templates

By: John Kirriemuir

John Kirriemuir — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:53:45 +0000

Seems like yesterday; as soon as that comment from CR came up on the RSS feed, the thought “Imesh Toolkit!” popped into my head.

This paper on things WHOIS++ was a nice collaborative production between the various ROADS gateways at the time:

By: Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus)

Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:34:26 +0000

Hi Chris - thanks for the comments. I can recall a meeting at Centre Point in the late 1990s at which I was very excited about the latest W3C initiative - RDF and the Semantic Web. You suggested caution at the time, I remember. I now know you were right! Perhaps standards need to simmer for 5-10 years before they’re ready for widespread adoption?

By: Chris Rusbridge

Chris Rusbridge — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:26:57 +0000

Yes, I remember that document. I thought I had a copy, but I don’t (perhaps because it was HTML, not a great format for keeping documents in…). I found an email about version 2 from 1998, by which time XML had been added and CGM seems to be listed in the raster section! I also found an email from Anthony Watkinson wanting to reference the document. I wrote back “Anthony, they are just guidelines for the eLib projects. They have just been updated, and should be updated regularly, but it is very difficult to achieve this. One of the problems is that you can’t define standards for projects which are attempting to explore new territory!”

I think that last point about standards versus what we would now call innovation is a very real concern.

At one point as we went through the series of MODELS workshops, it seemed that every year we had a new “magic bullet” that was going to solve our problems. Whois++ was it one year (and I still mourn the centroid!), Z39.50 came soon, collection descriptions followed, and so it went on. But you’re right, it’s interesting to speculate which of today’s hot buzz is tomorrow’s cold leftover curry!