Re: Using URIs to identify non-information resources

> > What is "http://sdkfsdkfjskldfjksldjf.example.com" the URI of?
>  
> > How about "http://example.com/dsfsdfsdffdfdf" ?
>  
> > If I try to visit
> >       http://larry1.example.com
> > and I get a "301 Moved Permanently" redirect to
> >       http://larry2.example.com
> > should I still consider ...larry1... to be the URL of your website?
> 
> All of these are straightforward.
>   - the resource that is connected to at host "sdkfsdkfjsd.....example.com"
>     using the HTTP protocol and a path of "/"
>   - the resource that is connected to at host "example.com" using the
>     HTTP protocol with path "/dsfsdfsdffdfdf"
>   - The resource identification  "http://larry1.example.com" does
>     does not depend on the behavior of the web server at
> "larry1.example.com".
>     The URI identifies 'the resource connected to at host larry1.example.com
>     using the path "/"'.
>     Operationally, what happens will vary, but the activity of connecting
>     and getting a response is something that happens after resource
>     identification.

Can you rephrase this all without using words like "resource" and
"connected", which are just as nebulous as the rest of this, at this
point?     I am certainly "a resource" and I am certainly "connected"
to "http://www.w3.org/People/Sandro".   I'm pretty sure that's not the
sense of "resource" and "connected" you had in mind, but I can't tell
what senses you do have in mind.

Let's just pick a 404 example, "http://example.com/foo".  What is that
particular URI the name of?  What does it identify?  If I talk about
the thing called http://example.com/foo, what am I talking about?

It seems to me there are two sensible answers:

   1.  That's not the name of anything.  It's like talking about the
       governor of the 51st state of the United States.  There's no
       such state, let alone such a governor.  Sure, you could imagine
       there might be, and you make some statements that would be true
       by definition if there were such a thing -- that the governor
       would be the chief executive officer of the state government --
       but there's still no such thing.

   2.  That's the name of a slot, of a location in the web's enormous
       address space, which is currently empty.  In this view,
       "http://www.w3.org/" names a slot which currently holds the
       W3C's home page document -- it's not the name of the document
       itself.

Personally, I like the second answer.  I find it very comfortable to
work with, but that's not how web specs have been written over the
years.  So that puts us in the first camp, I think.  Or do you have
another view?

     -- sandro

Received on Friday, 12 August 2005 14:41:37 UTC