Re: mailto: semantics, batting averages, and semantic interoperability

> 
> 
> Le mardi, 23 sep 2003, à 19:05 America/Montreal, Dan Connolly a écrit :
> >   Does mailto:foo@example identify an Internet mailbox?
> 
> What's an internet mailbox?
> 	- an individual user? 	-> aminata@example.org
> 	- a generic user?		-> webmaster@example.org
> 	- Aminata's pager?		-> aminata+pager@example.org
> 	- a mailing list?		-> public-sw-meaning@example.org
> 
> Does all of them qualify in the same way?

I think Dan was just using mailto as an example to steer clear of the
mess around HTTP.  Alas, mailto has its own mess. which I'll quickly
document here.  I don't think this has much to do with Dan's message.

RFC 2368 [1] says:

   The mailto URL scheme is used to designate the Internet mailing
   address of an individual or service. In its simplest form, a mailto
   URL contains an Internet mail address.

   For greater functionality, because interaction with some resources
   may require message headers or message bodies to be specified as well
   as the mail address, the mailto URL scheme is extended to allow
   setting mail header fields and the message body.

and includes examples like

   mailto:joe@example.com?cc=bob@example.com&body=hello

which clearly do not "identify" a mailbox.

With a general web hat on, I'd say mailto URIs, like http URIs,
identify something like a communication endpoint, rendezvous, or
response point [2].  Unlike http URIs, you can only send/post to
a mailto URI.

But I think that's all irrelevant to the meaning of URIs in RDF, since
I think in URIs in RDF affect meaning differently than in various
other contexts.  I think.

I want very much to be able to use a URI in RDF to name something and
then have people use that same URI in HTML (or their browser) to get
nice information about that something.  That's a dangerous thing to do
because it makes it very hard to talk in RDF about the web
page.... but on behalf of users I really want it!  Hrm.   

     -- sandro

[1] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2368.txt
[2] http://esw.w3.org/topic/ResponsePoint

Received on Wednesday, 24 September 2003 00:57:15 UTC