[LAD] minimal LV2

[Gabriel M. Beddingfield]

Hi drew,

On Mon, 14 Jun 2010, drew Roberts wrote:

> On Sunday 13 June 2010 17:35:22 fons at kokkinizita.net wrote:
>> 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'
>> 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