Re: What to do about namespace derived URI refs... (long)

> Do you have a reference for Tim's  "argument"?   In a
> similar thread on the URI list not too long ago, Dan
> Conolly argued (quite strongly) in favor of using HTTP
> URLs for non-retrievable entities.

TimBL uses URI-References with URL bases for plenty of things, so I
guess that he has no objections to that, but he doesn't use HTTP URLs
(with no "#") as namespaces, per:-

[[[
It is important, on the Semantic Web, to be clear about what is
identified. An http: URI (without fragment identifier) necessarily
identifies a generic document. This is because the HTTP server
response about a URI can deleiver a rendition of (or location of, or
apologies for) a document which is identified by the URI requested. A
client which understands the http: protocol can immediately conclude
that the fragementid-less URI is a generic document. This is true even
if the publisher (owner of the DNS name) has decided not to run a
server. Even if it just records the fact that the document is not
available online, still a client knows it refers to a document. This
means that identifiers for arbitrary RDF concepts should have fragment
identifiers. This in term means that RDF namespaces should end with
"#".
]]] - http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Fragment

I.e. not to use HTTP URIs rather than URI-References to identify
arbitrary RDF concepts.

--
Kindest Regards,
Sean B. Palmer
@prefix : <http://webns.net/roughterms/> .
:Sean :hasHomepage <http://purl.org/net/sbp/> .