Same-as and profile reuse with different naming conventions

[fosdev]

I think, as @leonardr has mentioned in discussion, there is a need for some same-as convention, particularly if ALPS defines vocabularies vs. solely consumes external vocabularies.

Also, I think some guidelines are probably warranted around what should be done for profile re-use, etc, when using different naming conventions, e.g. profile in camelCase, responses in snake_case and vice versa. So, a rubyist would want snake_case and a java programmer wants camelCase but they are the same thing.

Would one put a parameter or something in the href or an element in ALPS to define the naming convention so that a machine can match attributes appropriately?

[mamund]

I think names in ALPS documents should be treated as case insensitive. That means clients and servers can make whatever mappings they wish AND that the following would be illegal in an ALPS document

<descriptor id="myName" ... />
<descriptor id="myname" ... />

[mamund]

@leonardr

wanna take a shot at this one?

[fosdev]

Would that imply that we should also treat snake case in like fashion (i.e. strip out _) so that all the following are illegal because they are redundant:

<descriptor id="myName" ... />
<descriptor id="myname" ... />
<descriptor id="my_name" ... />

Not sure how we would specify that.

[mamund]

no.

These are unique:

• my-name
• my_name
• myname

These are not:

• myname
• MynAmE
• mYnaMe

[fosdev]

So, when we get around to this, could we make the argument that the way we specify same as is to use the IANA link rel 'related' in a link and then point to the other profile thing and punt that one out of ALPS?

However, I think we need to add the case insensitivity clarification still.

[mamund]

i wonder how (if at all) schema.org and ActivityStreams approaches this?

[fosrias]

@mamund should we just close this and take this up in the other thread?