On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 8:41 AM, Gabriel Wicke gwicke@wikimedia.org wrote:
Regarding general-purpose APIs vs. mobile: I think mobile is in some ways a special case as their content transformation needs are closely coupled with the way the apps are presenting the content. Additionally, at least until SPDY is deployed there is a strong performance incentive to bundle information in a single response tailored to the app's needs.
A notion of schemas that declare a specific set of transformations to be applied/not applied might help avoid overcomplicating things early on while addressing different transformation needs even within the growing number of mobile use cases (Android app alpha/beta/stable, iOS app alpha/beta/stable, mobile web alpha/beta/stable, third party apps), and potentially making code re-usable for desktop needs down the road. Since the number of schemas would be limited, and specifying the correct schema would result in a single response, performance could be optimized for each use case.
Erik