Re: resource and representation (and fragment identifiers)

At 06:56 PM 7/3/2002 -0700, Paul Prescod wrote:

> I buy your definition but have one question. Do fragment identifiers
> identify into the representation or the resource? If a fragment
> identifier is representation-specific (which it seems they typically
> are) then shouldn't URI References say what representation they are
> trying to address into?

Although fragment identifiers are commonly associated with a URI,
technically they're separate, according to RFC 2396 ("Uniform Resource
Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax") [1]: 

|4.1. Fragment Identifier
|
|   When a URI reference is used to perform a retrieval action on the
|   identified resource, the optional fragment identifier, separated from
|   the URI by a crosshatch ("#") character, consists of additional
|   reference information to be interpreted by the user agent after the
|   retrieval action has been successfully completed.  As such, it is not
|   part of a URI, but is often used in conjunction with a URI.

Given that fragment identifiers are not part of the URI, there's no
need for a URI to say what representation they are addressing.

[1] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt

Cheers,

Kenneth J. Hughes                                        kjh@entel.com
Entelechy Corporation                            http://www.entel.com/

Received on Friday, 12 July 2002 17:08:14 UTC