Expand description
What is connected, and what each connection offers.
§Wording
Nothing here names a protocol, a vendor, or a product. A connected thing is a server, what it offers are tools, skills and resources, and the act of asking is asking. Those words describe the shape of the surface rather than the wire format underneath it, so a host speaking any protocol renders the same component — which is the whole reason this crate refuses product vocabulary.
§Five states, and none of them is a shade of another
Connected, connecting, disconnected, failed, and turned off by the reader are five different sentences. Collapsing the last two loses the difference between something that broke and something nobody wanted; collapsing the first two claims a connection that has not been made. A failed server keeps its reason on screen, in the host’s own words, and offers exactly one control, which reports a retry and retries nothing.
§Offering nothing is not the same as not having been asked
Catalog::Offers with an empty list means the server answered and the
answer was empty. Catalog::Unasked means nobody asked. Rendering the
second as the first would tell the reader a server is useless when the
truth is that the application has not got round to it yet.
Structs§
- Offering
- One thing a server offers.
- Server
Entry - One connection.
- Server
List - The connections an application holds, and what each one offers.
Enums§
- Catalog
- What is known about what a server offers.
- Offering
Kind - Which of the three kinds of thing a server offers.
- Server
State - Where a connection stands.