Lucas Gonze writes:
> > Now that Kazaa has added "Kazaa Playlists" -- .kpl files, with a list of
> > other files inside -- it seems a good time to discuss and settle on an
> > official format (or formats) for MAGNET "manifest topics".
>
> Can you talk more about why this kind of thing should be a magnet feature,
> Gordon? EG, usecases?
>
> From what I understand so far, it seems to me that a Magnet-aware SMIL
> renderer might be more parsimonious than a SMIL-aware Magnet renderer.

MAGNET is a way to specify a "topic" for further action
by local applications, without necessarily specifying the
exact further action -- it depends on the user's choice
and what options are installed.

It's nice to be able to specify topics which are a single
entity, for example one multimedia file, but it is often
the case that files are parts of a whole, or a series,
or a collection, or alternatives.

So, considering one popular use of MAGNET links, specifying
resources to begin location-indifferent downloading, it would
make a lot of users happy to have one click offer them the
option of beginning a download of many related files, rather
than having to click a handful (or dozens or hundreds) of
separate links.

The reference to SMIL is helpful; SMIL certainly overlaps
with the "playlist" use-case of a MAGNET manifest, and if they
have established names and elements for collection-types,
it'd be very valuable to copy or learn from their choices.

But beyond "play"-lists, MAGNET topic-lists might be used as:

- shopping-lists (a local app might guide you to sites to
purchase the named resources)
- research-lists (a local app or website might tell you
more about each resource named, or the group as a set)
- white-lists (a local app might add the named resources,
at user choice, to an 'approved' content list)
- black-lists (a local app might add the named resources,
at user choice, to a 'prohibited'/'warning' content list)
- fetch-lists (a local app might try to find providers of
each named resource, in turn or in parallel)

etc. etc.

So in some ways SMIL is overkill and in others it would need
extension (or openness to extension) for these other potential
uses.

Most immediately, I would think a MAGNET manifest resource
should be able to do the same things as the proposed "subscripting"
method, of specifying more than one topic inside one "magnet:"
URI, except without the practical limits on URI-size (~1024 chars?)
imposed by some URI-handling software.

That is, you probably couldn't fit 50 topics into one "magnet:" link,
but you could easily specify them in a manifest file, and refer to
the file, by URN or URL, in a "magnet:" link.

- Gojomo
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