Define the general class of user agents that web user agents are members of. #38
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| A <dfn lt="general user agent">user agent</dfn>, in general, is any software entity | ||
| that interacts with other entities on behalf of its user. | ||
| User agents include many operating systems, email clients, PDF readers, | ||
| wallet software, password managers, and many other kinds of software. |
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In the FedID group and in other groups, we've moved away from talking about wallets in favor of "credential managers"... if you think it's appropriate, maybe link to from Cred Man:
| wallet software, password managers, and many other kinds of software. | |
| [=credential managers=], and many other kinds of software. |
That covers passwords, passkeys, digital credentials, etc. in a more generalized manner.
also, maybe drop "PDF readers"... I know we are giving very general examples for a lay audience, but seems overly format specific (e.g., Apple's Preview App previews PDFs and a bunch of other document types).
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How's the new version? I changed "PDF readers" to "PDF, ebook, and image viewers". I took the change to [=credential managers=] but kept digital wallets as an example, since I don't think most people think of credit cards as a credential (even though they are, by the definition).
| but there are other kinds of user agents in other domains, | ||
| for example "mail user agents" in the context of email. | ||
| but the full term should be used | ||
| if there's a chance of confusion with the [=general user agent|more general class=]. |
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I can def live with this "general" idea, but the reality (or in actual practice) we are really talking about software that is more or less exclusively a "web browser" or "browser engine" when we use user agent in conformance requirements.
so, personally, I don't think the idea of a "general user agent" super useful - only in a as far as "yeah, those do things on behalf of the user"... but the primary utility is still in the Infra spec sense.
I guess what I am trying to say is, when we (spec Editors) switch from Infra's definition to this one, the definition MUST continue to be as was defined in Infra originally - which was, to my understanding and usage, as browser engine.
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I think this doesn't imply any changes to the text, but let me know if I'm wrong.
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This will fix #33.
I'm not sure this is the order we want to present things, since it violates https://github.com/w3ctag/process/blob/main/style-guide.md#get-to-the-point. I could instead add a subsection after the "User agent behavior is not completely defined" paragraph, if people prefer that.
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