- From: Nathan <nathan@webr3.org>
- Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:57:39 +0100
- To: Norman Gray <norman@astro.gla.ac.uk>
- CC: Dave Reynolds <dave.e.reynolds@gmail.com>, Leigh Dodds <leigh.dodds@talis.com>, "public-lod@w3.org" <public-lod@w3.org>
Norman Gray wrote: > Nathan, hello. > On 2011 Oct 20, at 12:54, Nathan wrote: >> Norman Gray wrote: >>> Ugh: 'IR' and 'NIR' are ugly obscurantist terms (though reasonable in their original context). Wouldn't 'Bytes' and 'Thing', respectively, be better (says he, plaintively)? >> Both are misleading, since NIR is the set of all things, and IR is a >> proper subset of NIR, it doesn't make much sense to label it "non >> information resource(s)" when it does indeed contain information >> resources. From that perspective "IR" and "R" makes somewhat more sense. > > That's true, and clarifying. > > Or, more formally, R is the set of all resources (?equivalent to "things named by a URI"). IR is a subset of that, defined as all the things which return 200 when you dereference them. NIR is then just R \ IR. Indeed, I just wrote pretty much the same thing, but with a looser definition at [1], snipped here: "" The only potential clarity I have on the issue, and why I've clipped above, is that I feel the /only/ property that distinguishes an "IR" from anything else in the universe, is that it has a [transfer/transport]-protocol as a property of it. In the case of HTTP this would be anything that has an HTTP Interface as a property of it. If we say that anything with this property is a member of set X. If an interaction with the thing named <p:y>, using protocol 'p:', is successful, then <p:y> is a member of X. An X of course, being what is currently called an "Information Resource". Taking this approach would then position 303 as a clear opt-out built in to HTTP which allows a server to remain indifferent and merely point to some other X which may, or may not, give one more information as to what <p:y> refers to. "" [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2011Oct/0078.html That's my understanding of things any way. > It's NIR that's of interest to this discussion, but there's no way of indicating within HTTP that a resource is in that set [1], only that something is in IR. Correct, and I guess technically, and logically, HTTP can only ever have awareness of things which have an HTTP Interface as a property. So arguing for HTTP to cater for non HTTP things, seems a little illogical and I guess, impossible. > Back to your regularly scheduled argumentation... Aye, as always, carry on! Best, Nathan
Received on Friday, 21 October 2011 12:58:34 UTC