[Design] Re: [Cosmo-dev] Display name changes to collections don't sync

[Jeffrey Harris]

Hi Brian,

> ... but you left out all of the context of the discussion ;)

Oops, sloppy of me, the thread starts here: http://tinyurl.com/2j9wh2

> i think some people are overlooking the fact that, on the server, a
> subscription is a different entity than the collection itself. the
> subscription knows: the identity of the subscriber, the uuid of the
> collection, the ticket used to access the collection, and a name for
> the subscription that is unique to the subscriber.

Ah, I didn't know that Cosmo tracked a separate subscription name from
the collection name, thanks for pointing that out.  I'm going to call
local names "subscription names" on the Desktop, too.

> if Jeffrey changes the name of the collection to "My Work" (with dav
> or atom or in the desktop), i'll never notice, because my subscription
> is based on the collection's uuid, not its name, and because my
> subscription's name is independent of the collection's name.

Looking at the Desktop + WebUI ecosystem as a whole, it's not clear to
me if it's desirable for subscription names to be completely
disconnected from the "real" collection name.

I think there are many use cases where a collection name conveys shared
meaning, and a change to a collection name will be expected to be
visible to other users of the collection.

For small workgroups, I think people don't want to think about who
originally published a collection; if they've got read-write access,
they want to avoid the hassle of paying attention to who created the
collection.

So, in my ideal world, anyone who subscribes read-write to a collection
(in the WebUI or the Desktop) could change the real collection name, or
just their subscription name.  But if we can't achieve this ideal, it's
not really a big issue to me.

Sincerely,
Jeffrey