CMIS XIV: Can't do basic path manipulation? Don't blame AtomPub

David Nuscheler pointed out in an offline conversation that he can't do basic content management such as authoring an HTML document with links to images in the form <img src="http://www.blogger.com/images/logo.gif" /> using CMIS. He suspects it is due to AtomPub's approach to server-managed namespace. 

To cut the long story short, he is right that CMIS AtomPub seems a lost chance to address this basic requirement. The CMIS AtomPub draft (revised after so much wrangling over AtomPub interoperability) passively works against the intent of AtomPub mechanisms to support the desired naming and path usage. Here's why I think so:

1. It says nothing about the desirability of supporting the AtomPub Slug header when creating new items (whether folders or documents). 
2. It also says nothing about the desirability of hierarchical paths for a certain class of CMIS applications. 
3. It suggests that all content be supplied out-of-line.
4. It promotes examples such as the following path names that bear no resemblance to the hierarchical arrangement of folders and documents.

   http://cmisexample.oasis-open.org/rep1/8991ed69-adb9-4833-90a0-504d5338f006 (is the folder child) with the content of this document in http://cmisexample.oasis-open.org/rep1/4b01ffb2-91da-4f80-a908-79b66d35db42

   http://cmisexample.oasis-open.org/rep1/151c2ae8-ea3d-4031-b331-08680ac3e607/3 (is the folder entry)

In another post I will illustrate how to perform a basic series of AtomPub operations to obtain the desired behavior.