Re: distinguishing between 'description URLs' and 'interface URLs'

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 5:05 PM, Paul Michelotti
<pmichelotti@citytechinc.com> wrote:
> I disagree with the wording of 2.  Given this specific example, the most we
> would be able to say is "the string X is the URL of an interface to a
> mailbox which object Y owns (or is somehow associated with)" (unless when
> you say "object Y" you are referring to the mailbox and not the "user").

true!


> For web entities the separation of retrieval-URL and interaction-URL is
> somewhat artificial and it's necessity and value I imagine would be
> application specific.  It is entirely possible that a retrieval-URL and an
> interaction-URL will be the same URL.  For example,
> http://www.example.com/docs/exampledoc.html may be a retrieval-URL for a
> particular document resource representation, but may also act as an
> interaction-URL for updating the document resource.

also true!

so then maybe it's better to simplify a bit:

"URN of a thing": using a unique string to identity a thing that's off the web
- the URN of the book (e.g. urn:isbn:...)

"URL of a resource":
- the URL of a mailbox, without thinking about whether or not there is
a user linked to it (e.g. mailto:user@host)
- the URL of a document, without thinking about what that document is
about (e.g. http://host/doc.html)

"interface-URI of a thing": using the URL of an interface /to/ a thing
as a way to identify something that's off the web
- the URL of the mailbox of the user (e.g. mailto:user@host)

"description-URI of a thing": using the URL of a document /about/ a
thing as a way to identify something that's off the web
- the URL of the foaf profile of a user (e.g. http://host/~user.foaf)
- the URL of the description of a building

The words URN and URL already exists and are clear to everybody i think.

    'interface-URI' and 'description-URI' are the two terms we need to
introduce IMO.

because as long as these words don't exist, people will continue to
say 'the URI of the user' and 'the URI of the building', which is
non-sense to me. they should say 'the URL of a mailbox of the user'
and 'the URL of a description of the building' and everything would be
ok. but nobody is going to do that, it's too long. so to make that
easier, we can shorten that to 'an interface-URI of the user' and 'a
description-URI of the building'.

Received on Wednesday, 9 May 2012 18:23:09 UTC