Re: Request for status dump and issues check

On Mon, Jun 05, 2000 at 04:11:53PM -0400, keshlam@us.ibm.com wrote:
> >After absolutizing, you simply have to chop off further processing and say
> >"if not equal now, then not equal at all", neglecting things like DNS
> >case-blindness, symbolic links, http: and ftp: aliases, and so on.
> 
> That can be done, certainly, but it's not really the URI semantics. URIs
> only define strong equality; they don't define strong inequality; they can
> tell you that "http://www.ibm.com" equals itself, but if you compare it
> with "http://198.133.16.99" they say only "we don't know".
> 
> Yes, browsers operate on this weak-inequality mode when they change the
> color of a link to indicate it has been visited. But that's entirely a
> convenience feature; a false negative is relatively harmless. (The user
> visits the page again when they didn't have to, says "oops", and backs
> out.) If you're using URI recognizability to drive machine processing, the
> consequences get more expensive -- consider a search engine which must now
> waste time exploring redundant links. And if you're using it to drive
> namespace-aware document processing, where the essential goal is to be able
> to recognize the namespace/localname combination in order to get a yes/no
> "is this one I need to process" test, "I don't know" is not a useful
> response.
> 
> We can extend those semantics for purposes of namespace identity, and say
> "if we aren't certain it's equal, namespaces must treat it as unequal." But
> this is arguably a violation of the architectural assumptions behind URIs.
> And since the argument for absolutizing is an architectural one...

Actually it isn't. I know it isn't in 2396 but the assumption has always
been that if you don't know their equal then they aren't equal. 

-MM

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Received on Monday, 5 June 2000 16:20:51 UTC