Re: NIR SIDETRACK Re: Change Proposal for HttpRange-14

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 7:52 AM, Michael Brunnbauer <brunni@netestate.de> wrote:
>
> Hello Tim,
>
> On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 04:59:42PM -0400, Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
>> 12) Still people say "well, to know whether I use 200 or 303 I need to know if this sucker is an IR or NIR" when instead they should be saying "Well, am I going to serve the content of this sucker or information about it?".
>
> I think the question should be "does the response contain the content of it"
> because I can serve both at once (<foaf:PersonalProfileDocument rdf:about="">).

Yes, this is the question - is the retrieved representation content (I
used the word "instance" but it's not catching on), or description. It
can be both.

> Is there a difference between this question and the IR question if we take
> Dans definition of IR as 'Web-serializable networked entity' ?

There is a difference, since what is described could be an IR that
does not have the description as content. A prime example is any DOI,
e.g.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000462

(try doing conneg for RDF). The identified resource is an IR as you
suggest, but the representation (after the 303 redirect) is not its
content.

Another example (anti-httpRange-14) is

http://www.flickr.com/photos/70365734@N00/6905069277/

The identified resource (according to the retrieved RDFa) is an IR,
but the retrieved representation is not its content.

In other words, even if the identified resource is an IR (under any
definition), the question remains of whether the retrieved
representation is content or description (except in the case where it
is both). The two dimensions are orthogonal.

Maybe I misunderstand your question.

This whole "information resource" thing needs to just go away. I can't
believe how many people come back to it after the mistake has been
pointed out so many times. Maybe the TAG or someone has to make a
statement admitting that the way httpRange-14(a) was phrased was a big
screwup, that the real issue is content vs. description, not a type
distinction.

I think Jeni's proposal is to say that the Flickr URI is good
practice, rather than deny it. My proposal is to say that the
description-free situation is good practice, rather than just an
undocumented common practice.

In a hybrid world where some URIs work one way (by description) and
others work the other way (by ostention), the question for anyone
encountering a hashless http: URI in RDF, is which of the two
situations (or both) obtain. (Maybe there are some URIs that work
neither way, or there is a gray area.) It would be nice if there were
definite answers at least for some URIs.

Jonathan

> Regards,
>
> Michael Brunnbauer
>
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Received on Tuesday, 27 March 2012 13:02:44 UTC