- From: Tom Baker <tbaker@tbaker.de>
- Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2011 16:42:29 -0400
- To: "Young,Jeff (OR)" <jyoung@oclc.org>
- Cc: Jodi Schneider <jodi.schneider@deri.org>, Tom Baker <tbaker@tbaker.de>, Andrew Cunningham <andrewc@vicnet.net.au>, Karen Coyle <kcoyle@kcoyle.net>, Felix Sasaki <felix.sasaki@dfki.de>, duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp, Antoine Isaac <aisaac@few.vu.nl>, public-xg-lld <public-xg-lld@w3.org>, public-i18n-core@w3.org
On Fri, Sep 09, 2011 at 03:33:35PM -0400, Jeff Young wrote:
> A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a compact sequence of characters
> [in a standardized syntax] that identifies an abstract or physical
> resource. [RFC 3986]. An Internationalized Resource Identifier (IRI)
> [RFC 3987] compliments URIs by including characters from the Universal
> Character Set (Unicode/ISO 10646). While this report follows common
> Linked Data practice of using the term "URI", readers should note the
> increasing prominence of IRIs as non-Latin script resources and
> participants are being joined in the Linked Data environment.
Missing from this definition, as I see it, is a reference to a prefix ("URI
scheme") that grounds the identifier in a global context. Perhaps that's what
the reference to "standardized syntax" is getting at, but I think we could be a
bit more explicit on this point. As written, the first sentence could be taken
to mean that a bare ISBN is a URI, whereas it wouldn't really be a URI unless
that ISBN number were embedded in a URN, e.g.,: "urn:isbn:0-486-27557-4".
The report also refers to "HTTP URIs", so the point could also provide an
opportunity to define those (and relate them to the well-known URLs) as
well.
How about:
*Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)*. A URI is a sequence of
characters, in a standardized syntax, which is used to identify an
abstract or physical resource within the global context of the World Wide
Web. "HTTP URIs" -- URIs prefixed with "http://", also known as "URLs" --
imply that a representation of the resource can be obtained by a browser
using the most common Web protocol, HTTP. While this report follows
common Linked Data practice in referring to "URIs", readers should note
the growing role of Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs), which
compliment URIs by supporting non-Latin scripts.
Hmm, a bit long...?
Tom
--
Tom Baker <tom@tombaker.org>
Received on Friday, 9 September 2011 20:43:16 UTC