- From: Williams, Stuart (HP Labs, Bristol) <skw@hp.com>
- Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:55:02 +0000
- To: Jonathan Rees <jar@creativecommons.org>, "public-awwsw@w3.org" <public-awwsw@w3.org>
Hello Jonathan, > -----Original Message----- > From: public-awwsw-request@w3.org > [mailto:public-awwsw-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan Rees > Sent: 16 April 2008 14:29 > To: public-awwsw@w3.org > Subject: network endpoints > > > One thing I would like to add to my diagram: A box for "network > endpoint" with the meaning of a real-world source of > awww:representations (e.g. a "web page" operationally defined by the > process of sending an HTTP request specifying a particular resource- > name string to a particular server, using the Internet, and so on). Oooohhh, I'd really rather that you didn't - not unless you really really have to. I'd really rather see the detail of the infrastructure of the web as something under the hood - outside the domain of discourse - which supports and abstraction of a world of resources perceived through exchanges of representations. I'd prefer, as I said to Alan [1], to regard requests as being questions asked of the web (ie. the web infrastucture) and responses as originating from web infrastructure without having to give a detailed account of what's going on under the hood. eg. proxy's and caches - worse (and maybe this takes to a place where we have to consider the machinery) transcoding proxies or proxies that introduce/suppress advertising - but I think we should speak of the simple cases for now... and I don't think that there is a compelling need to speak of HTTP network endpoints. eg. discussing 404 or 40x variants becomes very elaborate - rather than for some reason web infrastructure was unable to find the resource. [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2008Apr/0057 [Aside: you might search www-tag for the phrase "hypertext dispenser" possibly hyphenated] > This is an interesting class of things that David Booth has > articulated on a number of occasions. Tim and others have clearly > said that these things are *not* IRs. I think it's more useful to say > *how* endpoints relate to the intended information resources / > denotations than to just say that they're not information resources. I don't see how think about them at all helps... but I could be persuaded. > "Endpoint" would be placed near "value cloud" in the diagram and > would be related to "value" by a relationship "responds to 200 > with ... (at time t)" and to "information resource" by another > relationship that's analogous to "faithful to" i.e. for all time t > any value delivered is a kr-representation of the state of the > information resource. Give it a try I suppose... but I think that the model will become more prescriptive than it need be about the internal structure of web infrastructure - and offer folks a larger target to say... well I model it differently... like this... > An "endpoint" could also be related to a "value cloud" via > composition of relationships, but that would probably be clutter. > > Once all of these separate entities are defined we can start to talk > about the relationships and invariants between them - e.g. does every > endpoint have an associated IR? Are there endpoints whose URIs do not > denote information resources? Are there endpoints for which the URI > denotes an information resources but that is not faithful to that IR? > For me it is this kind of question (not necessarily these particular > ones) that will be useful in cracking the question of web semantics. > > None of this is to say I understand as well as Tim does what things > can be "information resources" and what things can't... but I'm very > happy to know that the URI does *not* generally denote the value > cloud and that the value cloud isn't even part of or determined by > the information resource. (Constrained, yes, but not determined.) > > I'll make the change in a day or two or three if I hear no outcry. I guess consider this a little cry out :-) > Jonathan Stuart -- Hewlett-Packard Limited registered Office: Cain Road, Bracknell, Berks RG12 1HN Registered No: 690597 England > > On Apr 15, 2008, at 8:34 PM, Jonathan Rees wrote: > > > Revised diagram based on this morning's meeting is here: > > > > http://sw.neurocommons.org/2008/inforesource.pdf > > > > (N.b. that's PDF, not PNG.) > > > > I've renamed 'abstract document' to 'information resource' since > > the consensus was that they're the same. > > The main reason to include the 'value cloud' in the diagram is to > > help me understand how 'information resource' relates to Fielding's > > formal definition of 'resource'. > > > > Let me know how you like it. > > > > Jonathan > > > >> > >> http://sw.neurocommons.org/2008/inforesource.png > >> > >> which I will not take the time to prettify now (I don't know why > >> the background is gray) > >> > > >
Received on Wednesday, 16 April 2008 16:59:17 UTC