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Widget versioning - the widget, the spec, the platform api

• From: "Andrew Welch" <andrew.j.welch@g...>
• To: "xml-dev@l..." <xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2009 10:53:00 +0000

Hi,

I'm interested if anyone on the list works with Widgets and how they
achieve versioning.  There are effectively 3 versions the widget needs
to define:

- The version of the widget itself

- The version of the xsd the widget config XML adheres to (including
any extensions to the config)

- The version of the api required on the widget platform (currently
proprietary, but could be a common api if one were to emerge)

The widget spec (http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets/) defines the first one,
but not the other two.  The widget version is defined as the version
of the widget itself - not the version of the spec - which makes me
wonder what will happen when version 2.0 of the widget spec is
released - how would a widget platform implementing the spec
differentiate widgets written to the different versions of the spec?

Regarind api versioning, Yahoo Widgets and Netvibes they use extension
elements/attributes, but I'm wondering if the w3c had intentionally
left those values out for some reason? I don't want to invert more
proprietary markup when the spec intended it to be achieved in some
other way.

I'm also interested on anyone's views about widgets in general, and if
they think the widget spec will have any progress on standardisation
whatsoever?

cheerrs
andrew


-- 
Andrew Welch
http://andrewjwelch.com
Kernow: http://kernowforsaxon.sf.net/