Re: Proposal to amend the httpRange-14 resolution

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 5:45 AM, Jonathan A Rees <rees@mumble.net> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 10:10 AM, Tore Eriksson <tore.eriksson@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 2012/3/27 Jonathan A Rees <rees@mumble.net>:
>>> 2012/3/26 Tore Eriksson <tore.eriksson@gmail.com>:
>>>> Hi Tim,
>>>>
>>>> thank you for your detailed input. I'll add my comments inline.
>>>>
>>>> 2012/3/26 Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>:
>>>>>
>>>>> On 2012-03 -26, at 01:31, トーレ エリクソン wrote:
>>>>>>>> This proposal entails a partial reversion of the httpRange-14
>>>>>>>> resolution. Specifically, it suggests that a representation retrieved
>>>>>>>> from a HTTP URI will never* be equivalent to what the URI denotes (the
>>>>>>>> resource), but will always be a description (of the state) of the
>>>>>>>> resource, eliminating the risk of confusing a resource with its
>>>>>>>> description.
>>>>>
>>>>> [...]
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> However, if you don't own the URI, stating this seems to irresponsible.
>>>>>> The owner might add a content-negotiated Swedish translation with a
>>>>>> dc:title of "Hittad" and make your statement invalid.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> That is hair-splitting -- yes, a generic IR URI may indeed by correspond to
>>>>> a series of more specific versions in different languages
>>>>> (See http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Generic and the associated ontology)
>>>>> and one can argue whether people incorrectly actually use
>>>>> one title to refer to the whole lot, but I think it is useful.
>>>>
>>>> I have no problem with adding the title to the generic resource,
>>>> especially if you own the URI. My understanding of Jonathan's text was
>>>> though that by looking at one representation titled "Trouvee", one
>>>> could infer that all representations would have the same title.
>>>
>>> This is an incorrect reading of what I wrote. I was very careful in
>>> what I said, and I did not say this.
>>
>> Sorry if I misrepresented your text. I'll explain why I thought it
>> meant this below.
>>
>> You started with
>>>>
>> To say that any representation retrieved from "http://example/hen" has
>> (or will have) "Trouvée" as its title, we can write (in Turtle
>> [turtle])
>>    [ir:onWebAt "http://example/hen"] dc:title "Trouvée".
>> [this tells that] if they dereference that URI, they will get
>> something with that dc:title [1]
>>>>
>>
>> And then used the generic URI instead of the blank node.
>>
>>>>
>> A common practice is to use an absolute URI as a name for a (generic)
>> information entity that is on the Web at that URI.
>> <http://example/hen> dc:title "Trouvée".
>>>>
>>
>> Then you followed up with
>>
>>>>
>> Whether we can expect in general that a dereferenceable URI will be
>> understood as a name for a (generic) information entity on the Web at
>> that URI is the essence of the heated httpRange-14 debate
>>>>
>>
>> I assumed that this meant that when following httpRange-14 the RDF
>> above is expected.
>
> It would only be expected if it were true, and it would only be true
> if *any* representation, not just one of them, had that property.

That is what I thought at first, by looking at the initial RDF. Then I read

"This is a useful thing to say, since it is predictive: It tells
someone that if they retrieve using URI, they will get something with
that dc:title."

This sounded a lot as if all the representations are constrained to
have the same title.

[snip]

>> My train of thought was this: If a HTML document is retrieved by with
>> a 200 GET, then under httpRange-14 this is an information resource,
>> and also a generic information entity. Let's say that the HTML
>> document received has the dc:title "Trouvee". Then the generic
>> resource also has the same title (according to [1])
>
> That's the fallacy. The generic resource only has the property if, no
> matter which representation is retrieved (across conneg variation
> etc.), that representation has the property.

Since this is impossible to check for the user, wouldn't it be
difficult to have predictable meta data in practice?

> I guess I didn't make this clear, but it's a difficult idea to
> express. If you want to know what bit of philosophy inspired me to
> express it this way, see _Truth, Meaning, Reality_ by Horwich.

I'll make sure to put that on my e-book reader later.

> I thought this would be clear in the overall context of the note. I
> guess I have to look again to see how I failed to communicate.

I hope I've been of some help.

Received on Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:42:31 UTC