httpRange proposed text

+1  

I would recommend not mentioning HTTP at all.  I *would* recommend
adding three sentences regarding URIs in general:

"If two people independently use the same URI as an identifier, they
should be able to have a reasonable degree of confidence that they are
identifying the same resource.  

People should not be required to parse, dereference, or otherwise
acquire any *additional* disambiguating information to provide this
basic guarantee.  

Resource naming practices should be considered carefully, and people are
strongly discouraged from naming resources in a manner that
unnecessarily weakens this guarantee."



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tim Bray [mailto:tbray@textuality.com]
> Sent: Monday, July 29, 2002 11:33 AM
> To: Dan Connolly
> Cc: Joshua Allen; Roy T. Fielding; Sean B. Palmer; www-tag@w3.org
> 
> Dan Connolly wrote:
> 
> > Whether http URIs can identify cars and such or not isn't observable
> > from the HTTP protocol itself.
> 
> Indeed.  And given that the server can decide to send back whatever it
> $#^!%#&!@ well wants to (and I've written a lot of server code that
uses
> some *very* non-obvious inputs in deciding what to emit in response to
a
> URI)...
> 
> And given that outside of RDF, the Web architecture has no built-in
way
> at all to talk about what a resource "is"...
> 
> the only world-view that makes sense to me is what my section 1.1
draft
> says, a resource is just whatever it happens to be, you can get
> representations of it by asking (sometimes), and you can make
assertions
> about it regardless of whatever it "is", whatever "is" means, whatever
> "means" means, and neatly dodge all the metaphysical bushwah.
> 
> And the more I think about it, the less I can believe in any special
> distinguished status or limitations for HTTP URIs, aside from noting
the
> obvious fact that they have the useful advantage of a well-defined
> builtin protocol for requesting/receiving representations.  -Tim