Re: ISSUE-81 (resource vs representation)

Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> ...
>> Not sure what counts as "dependency" specification. I'm ready to 
>> believe that HTML5 currently references other specs that get this 
>> wrong, too. But what's relevant here are the specs that define the term.
> 
> To give a specific example, Unicode, ECMAScript and CSS all define the 
> term "property" in completely different ways. And HTML5 adds yet another 
> distinct definition in a different context. As far as I'm concerned, 
> this is not a problem, because it's always clear what is meant.
> ...

Understood, and agreed. I think everybody in the computer business is 
aware of the fact that the precise meaning of "property" depends on the 
context.

> Another example: RFC3986 has a different (much more general) definition 
> of "resource" than the HTTP RFC.

Yes, and that's fine because it defines a subset for the context of 
HTTP. Any RFC2616-resource should be an RFC3986-resource, otherwise that 
would be a bug.

>> Furthermore, as explained earlier, HTML5 is inconsistent in itself; 
>> and that's something that should be fixed. If "Foobar" is the thing 
>> identified by a URL (HTML5) then it simply can't be a bag-of-bits at 
>> the same time.
> 
> Natural language is context-sensitive. I don't think any actual 
> confusion is caused.

If no confusion is caused, fine. That's something we can check.

On the other hand, can we please agree that "A resource is a bag of 
bits" is plainly incorrect? If it would be correct than HTML5 would need 
a different term for the thing a URL identifies (because of, as 
mentioned earlier, content-negotiation and also uses other than GET, 
such as POST).

BR, Julian

Received on Sunday, 27 September 2009 10:37:44 UTC