- From: Aaron Swartz <aswartz@swartzfam.com>
- Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 17:24:38 -0600
- To: Bill de hOra <bill@dehora.fsnet.co.uk>, Graham Klyne <GK@ninebynine.org>, Pierre-Antoine CHAMPIN <champin@bat710.univ-lyon1.fr>
- CC: RDF interest group <www-rdf-interest@w3.org>
Bill de hOra <bill@dehora.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
> "Paris" -> data:,Paris
> "Paris" -> data:,Paris
> "Paris" -> data:,Paris
>
> The first "Paris" was the name of a perfume, the second was the name of a god,
> the third was the name of a city. By converting them all to URIs, I've lost
> information.
No you haven't. You're assuming that the data: series of URIs actually
represents the resource in whose context they are used. This is not true --
a data: URI simply represents the string of characters in it's content, not
the meaning of the characters.
When I make the statement that:
<http://aaronsw.com/> dc:title <data:,Aaron%20Swartz>
I'm simply saying that the title is the set of characters: "Aaron Swartz".
No more, no less. If I want to look at the other things hanging off that
URI, and can see the other things that this string of characters represents.
I think this is more information, not less.
Of course, if we are going to start saying things about data: URIs, we must
be sure to talk about the data itself, not what it represents. For example:
<data:,Aaron%20Swartz> foaf:mailbox <mailto:me@aaronsw.com>
would be a bad idea, since that set of characters doesn't have an email
address.
--
[ Aaron Swartz | me@aaronsw.com | http://www.aaronsw.com ]
Received on Wednesday, 14 February 2001 18:24:42 UTC