Re: Preferable alternative to 'resource'

Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
> I agree that that is a terrible word. It is an abuse of the english 
> word. (Its use is is historical: when Universal Resource Idemtofiers 
> and Resource Description Format were dreamed up, the communities were 
> very  much thinking of Information resources, such as educational 
> resources available on the WWW).
>
> So, Pat, what would be a better word which we should use instead?   
> The class of all  ____ s?  The class of which all classes are 
> subclasses is the class of ____ s?
Personally, I don't think resource is bad.  Sure, it is abused but 
wouldn't any word chosen be abused too? The word "resource", 
"identifies", "representation" etc., used in the WWW are all new 
concepts.  None of the existing word would be able to precisely describe 
it.    If we really want to force the issue, just QNaming it in the 
document such as w3:resource, w3:identifies etc..

Xiaoshu Wang

Received on Saturday, 29 September 2007 10:45:30 UTC