Re: Middle ground change proposal for httpRange-14

Hi David,

On Sun, 2012-03-25 at 13:50 -0400, David Wood wrote:
[ . . . ]
> > http://www.w3.org/wiki/UriDefinitionDiscoveryProtocol
[ . . . ]
> +1.  I quite like the registration of the "isDefinedBy" relation as a
> complement to POWDER's "describedby", although I'd probably name it in
> the same way for consistency ("definedby").

Good point.  I've made that change.


> > - It encourages URI owners to publish URI definitions even if those URI
> > definitions are not perfect. 
> 
> It also allows non-URI owners to publish conflicting or complementary
> definitions and for them to refer by URI to each others definitions.
> That's good.

Excellent point.  I've added that as well.

[ . . . ]
> A note regarding hash URIs:  It seems to me that the major use for
> hash URIs is to provide links into monolithic human-oriented
> documentation.  That made sense on the early Web and still works
> today.  Your proposal would allow existing users of hash URIs to
> provide a separate machine-oriented "isDefinedBy" relation URI.  That
> would make a nice (and useful) bridge toward addressing hash URI
> deployments without breaking them.

Very good point.  But can you help me understand how you envision this,
so that I can add appropriate verbiage?  Are you suggesting that the
stem of a stem#fragid hash URI would server an RDFa document containing
a "definedby" relation that points to an RDF document?  Or the other way
around?  Or something else?

> 
> It is also worth noting that hash URI users could easily navigate
> bi-directionally between human- and machine-oriented content using
> this approach, thereby taking the sting out of the use of hash URIs:
> Once a machine-oriented definition URI has been found once, it could
> be cached and used subsequently.  In other words, this proposal (ever
> so slightly extended to be more clear regarding the caching guidance
> for the "isDefinedBy" relation) could be used to get around the
> existing cacheless nature of the 303 response.

Excellent point.  I'll add verbiage about this once I better understand
how you envision it.

[ . . . ]
> After giving this proposal a provisional "thumbs up", I still doubt
> whether the TAG (after more than a decade arguing about this and
> finally satisfying http-range-14 via a minimal patch) will be able to
> come to consensus on a major change.  Good luck :)

Thanks.  We'll probably need it.  :)



-- 
David Booth, Ph.D.
http://dbooth.org/

Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of his employer.

Received on Sunday, 25 March 2012 21:02:13 UTC