Re: i109: Clarify entity / representation / variant terminology

Am 09.05.2008 um 08:09 schrieb Mark Nottingham:

> <http://www3.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/109>
> [...]
> Straw-man proposal:
>
> 1) "variant" occurs 16 times in the -02 specs, and a good portion  
> of those is the "requested variant" text. If we ignore those  
> instances for the moment, the expedient thing to do would seem to  
> be to change the remaining occurrences to either "entity" or  
> "representation," and remove this term altogether.

+1 for "representation" (see below).

> 2) "representation" occurs 47 times in the -02 specs, while  
> "entity" occurs 420 times.
>
> One option would be to switch all occurrences of "entity" over to  
> "representation" or vice-versa. If we do the former, we'll end up  
> with awkward things like changing the classification of "entity- 
> header fields" to "representation-header fields" and "entity tags"  
> to "representation tags." Doing the latter seems more  
> straightforward, but it still jars some.
>
> A more moderate approach to #2 would be to choose a preferred term,  
> migrate to it where it's sensible (at editors' discretion), and  
> explicitly define the terms to mean the same thing.
>
> Thoughts?

For me, "entity" is part of the message and "representation" is part  
of the resource. So, for my (probably soon corrected by the big guns  
here) incomplete gut-http-feeling, it makes sense to say things like:  
The representation of a resource is transferred as the entity in a  
HTTP response message.

//Stefan

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Received on Friday, 9 May 2008 08:02:45 UTC