Re: Arch Doc: 26 September 2003 Editor's Draft

Roy T. Fielding wrote:

> Oh, I see what you are getting at, though now we are also facing
> confusion over "networked" (meaning connected like a graph) versus
> spanning the Internet network.  Let's go back to the base concepts:
> 
>    The World Wide Web is an information space consisting of resources
>    that are interconnected by links defined within that space.
> 
> Maybe that is sufficient to describe the scope of the Web?  

Hmm, it seems to me that the fact that everything works over the network 
is a key defining component.  The description above could apply to 
Hypercard or even the 1993 version of Microsoft help.   I'm OK with the 
language above but think we should re-insert "that spans networks" after 
"information space".  Or "network-spanning" before it.

>    A link defines a relationship that can be considered active or
>    passive, depending upon the type of information system in use.
>    For example, hypertext browsers consider anchors and in-line image
>    references to be active links (hyperlinks), whereas a reasoning
>    system might focus activity on namespace references, a
>    messaging agent might traverse service descriptions, or a
>    subscriber might describe "callback" control-points.

Interesting.  Probably a few words on the taxonomy of linkage is 
appropriate to this document, it probably lives most naturally in the 
"identification" section.  Also need to make the point that while an <a 
href="" is nominally one-way, the relationship is two-way; plus some 
other things that were written up in the XLink preamble.  -Tim

Received on Tuesday, 30 September 2003 10:56:40 UTC