Re: TAG request: establish the relationship between URIs and Resources is many to many

TimBL,

TimBL wrote in http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2003Jan/0330.html :

>On Thursday, Jan 23, 2003, at 07:24 US/Eastern, Bill de hÓra wrote:
> > . . . However I believe the notion that a URI only ever identifies
> > one thing, however appealing, is fictitious, . . . .
>
>I disagree.  . . .  The web works because
>when you make a link you assume that the URI which the publisher of
>the target document gave you will, anywhere in the world,
>identify the same web page. You quote the URI, and it stands for the
>page.

It's unclear whether you're talking about a string that conforms to the 
*syntax* of a URI (as specified in RFC2396) or a string that conforms to 
the *semantics* of RFC2396 (where "conforming to the semantics" of RFC2396 
means that the string denotes one particular thing).

It sounds to me like Bill is saying that

         http://x.org/MyCar

might mean the car in one context or language, and the picture of the car 
in another, which will always be true, because you *always* have to know 
the language in order to determine the meaning of *any* statement.

So it sounds to me like Bill is talking about a string that conforms to the 
*syntax* of an RFC2396 URI, while you are talking about a string that 
conforms to the syntax *and* (what you believe to be) the semantics of an 
RFC2396 URI.

Is that correct?


-- 
David Booth
W3C Fellow / Hewlett-Packard
Telephone: +1.617.253.1273