RE: [httpRange-14] empiricism was Re: resources and URIs

>>My current thinking is that HTTP URIs most directly denote
>>ResponsePoints [1].

>That is the best idea Ive heard so far.  Is that consistent with 
>Tim's idea of an 'information resource' ? 

It's consistent with Joshua Allen's comments last year 
that a 'resource is a hypertext dispenser'.  I don't 
know if it is more revealing than that but it is certainly 
the common assumption right up there with a 'resource is a 
server'.  Does it help the architecture document to know that 
or is it a qualification of a use of a URI in a context?

>No, look. Interoperability does NOT require that we pick a single 
>fixed semantics. All it requires is that your semantics for the URI 
>and my semantics for it are *compatible*. 

Umm... the syntax for The URI is it's semantic.  Past that, 
a different system and therefore different semantics are the 
basis of interoperation.  How far 'compatibility' gets one is 
different system by system.  Reliability differs by proof so 
in that sense, you are right.  I don't know if that helps to 
get a web architecture document completed because so far, 
there isn't a definition for the Web that meets everyone's 
different notions of proof.  The Web architecture document 
is supposed to be that definition, I hazard, but the process 
of creating that won't close without a definition for 'done' 
and without some assertion/proof boundaries, that won't happen.  

I suspect URIs are bigger than the web because they are 
used off the web too.  A URI on a billboard is not a 
resource on a web.  It is a syntactically correct URI 
on a billboard.  One can say it is part of the web but 
that is silly on the face of it; it is far simpler and 
just as correct to say it is a non-web system using 
a URI for whatever it does, but the web architecture 
being a system architecture, doesn't care.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: pat hayes [mailto:phayes@ihmc.us]
Sent: Monday, July 21, 2003 1:32 PM
To: Sandro Hawke
Cc: Dan Connolly; www-tag@w3.org
Subject: Re: [httpRange-14] empiricism was Re: resources and URIs



>  > http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform
>>  http://www.w3.org/2000/svg
>>  http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema
>>
>>  Now we have 3 URIs created by the W3C over the course of 3 years. The
>>  representations obtained on dereferencing the URIs state that these are
>>  intended to be "XML Namespaces"
>
>But they state it in English, thank goodness, so we have some wiggle
>room.  If they said it in RDF we might have to conclude they were
>simply false, since they were logically inconsistent with our
>ontologies (yours and mine at least) of XML Namespaces.
>
>It being English, we can read "This is an XML namespace defined in..." as
>"This is the offical page of information about the XML namespace
>... defined in ...".   Of course that level of self-description is a
>bit silly, but it might be necessary while people are figuring out
>namespaces.
>
>>  I understand this position, you are saying that all HTTP URIs identify
>>  *documents*, that is to say all resources which are directly 'on the
web'
>>  and who are identified by HTTP URIs are documents.
>

Received on Monday, 21 July 2003 14:58:10 UTC