The reliance on Content-type

[David Recordon]

The issue with any of the URL based magic is that it doesn't work along
with the concept of owning a single URL.

When I say I am http://daveman692.livejournal.com it means solely I own
that one URL, not that I own the directory under it, the directory
itself, a directory above it, etc.  You very well could have
http://www.example.com/david.html and
http://www.example.com/johannes.html.  The URL magic, as proposed, would
not fit this use case.

The issue I see is a tradeoff between a ?meta=capabilities request or
using the HTTP accept header.  Both have their own advantages and
disadvantages and provide their own adoption issues.  Could we tackle
both with the following?

GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com/david.php?meta=capabilities
Accept: application/xrid+xml, text/html;q=0.5

So the YADIS spec would say it should do the request with both the
accept header and the CGI style variable?  No overhead on the consumer
side and then the server's implementation gets to choose which is easier
for it to support.  Seems to address the adoption issues we see from
either side, unless there is still something I'm missing.

--David