RE: web proper names

Hi Harry,

Harry Halpin writes:
 > > <http://www.hackcraft.net/foaf/>
 > > <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type>
 > > <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Document> .
 > > <http://www.hackcraft.net/foaf/> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/maker>
 > > <http://www.hackcraft.net/jon/> .
 > > <http://www.hackcraft.net/jon/>
 > > <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type>
 > > <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person> .
 > 
 > Now make the concept of "www.hackcraft.net/jon/" interoperable with 
 > someone, say a me, who is using "www.ibiblio.org/hhalpin/jon" to refer to 
 > you. And pretend we don't know each other :) How is a machine going to 
 > discover that sameAs unless someone tells it that?
 > 

Using an IFP - e.g. foaf:mbox. 

E.g. Since Jon has a relatively small number of personal email
addresses, you'll most likely use the same ones when describing
him. Any knowledge setup worth its salt will be able to identify that
you're refering to the same person by leveraging the foaf schema to
note that foaf:mbox is inverseFunctional.

To be honest I'm a bit lost as to why this thread is generating so
many posts - these are non-problems as far as I can see. They are
solved in the same way as they are solved in real life - using
context.

e.g. 

<http://example.com/pd> foaf:surname "Dawes"

clearly indicates to anyone (man or machine) that understands the
foaf:surname predicate that http://example.com/pd identifies a
foaf:Person. Not a web page, audio file or anything else not
compatible with foaf:Person (although a representation may be
retrieved by HTTP GETting the URI, but that's a seperate matter).

similarly:

<http://example.com/pd> foaf:img <http://example.com/phildawes>

indicates that <http://example.com/pd> identifies a foaf:Person, and
<http://example.com/phildawes> identifies an foaf:Image.

(the foaf prefix being shorthand for http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/ in all
these examples)

I can no more see why we need special URIs to identify certain types
of 'thing' or 'Concept', than we need to put a special symbol at the
start of a person's name to indicate that it identifies a person.

Also, I don't think it will make much difference at this late
stage. People (or rather 'agents') will continue to use http URIs to
mean anything they like, as they have been for the past 8 years or so
- you have to use context to attempt to deduce what they mean.

Am I missing something?

Cheers,

Phil

Received on Tuesday, 21 September 2004 11:14:20 UTC