Re: [httpRange-14] What is an Information Resource?

On mån, 2007-12-17 at 17:34 -0800, Pat Hayes wrote:
> >.... I think an RDF graph is not a
> >document, but is an IR.  I believe that an RDF graph is pretty completely
> >characterized by a set of triples.
> 
> An RDF graph is *defined* to be a set of triples in the normative RDF 
> spec, so your belief has some support :-)
> 
> >  I believe I can, with suitable
> >agreements between sender and receiver about the encoding (as we require
> >for all information transmission), I can transmit those triples with
> >complete fidelity, and a receiver could reproduce them with no loss at
> >all.  Q.E.D.
> 
> Hmm. You can transmit some textual encoding of the triples in a 
> lossless way, yes. But you can't actually transmit the triples 
> themselves.

Well, you're not supposed to send the resource itself, wasn't that the
point? You're supposed to transmit the "essential characteristics" in a
MIME message.

If RDF/XML fails to be a representation in that sense of an RDF graph, I
must say I'm completely lost. Let's say you set up a resource
http://example.org/myrdf and conneg between application/rdf+xml and
text/n3 (or whatever the MIME type is supposed to be) - what is the
resource?  How can you ever serve RDF/XML with 200 Ok?

Can we please have some clarification here?

/Mikael




>  Compare sending a numeral in some text, using some 
> numerical convention, vs. sending an actual number. Maybe if 
> 'lossless' is the sole criterion, then numbers are IRs also, since 
> the literal "123"^^xsd:number seems to be an encoding of the number 
> one hundred and twenty three with perfect fidelity. But I'm betting 
> that this isn't what was originally intended by the IR idea.
> 
> Pat
> 
> 
-- 
<mikael@nilsson.name>

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose