[DAS] Re: "detailed view" das view problem

[Thomas Down]

On Mon, May 13, 2002 at 07:40:30PM +0100, Tony Cox wrote:
> 
> I'm not sure what the DAS spec says on this point...ah here it is:
> 
> "Annotation servers are only required to return annotations which are completely
> contained within the indicated segment. Servers may also return annotations
> which overlap the segment, but are not completely contained within
> them."
> 
> ...which I guess means you can do what you like to be OK with the spec and is
> therefore both a feature and a bug ;-)
> 
> You should however be able to get features that completely overlap the viewable
> region. Do you noe see these? I think we need to look at how the features are
> selected and see if we can catch these things.

Hmmm, this is news to me.  Hmmm <checks though old copies of the
spec>.  This clause seems to have been added between versions 0.9971
and 1.0 of the specification.  I read previous versions as implying
`overlaps' semantics. 

Is there any reason why the specifications allow `contains' semantics
as a valid alternative?  It seems to make client developers' life a lot
harder.  Are there any cases where it makes life substantially easier
for server developers?  How many current server implementations are
actually taking advantage of this flexibility?

   Thomas.