- From: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 03 May 2006 09:45:00 -0500
- To: "Booth, David (HP Software - Boston)" <dbooth@hp.com>
- Cc: public-swbp-wg@w3.org
On Fri, 2006-04-28 at 23:44 -0400, Booth, David (HP Software - Boston) wrote: > > From: Dan Connolly > > . . . > > Pat Hayes wrote: > > > My current > > > understanding is that an information resource is some thing > > > that can > > > be transmitted over a network by a transfer protocol. On this > > > understanding, one could argue that a word was an information > > > resource. > > > > On Thu, 20 Apr 2006 17:40:20 -0400 Booth, David wrote: > > > It sounds like you are mainly disagreeing with the TAG's guidance. > > > > For what it's worth, I think Pat's position is consistent > > with the TAG's position (i.e. the W3C's position, since > > webarch is now a W3C Recommendation). > > I'm surprised and baffled, since I thought Pat argued that it is okay > for a URI to be used both as a name for a person and a name for a > document that describes that person. But I guess you're referring to > this one point about a word being an information resource. Yes, just the one point. > > . . . The definition of "Information Resource" that W3C > > endorses[10] is: > > . . . > > > http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-webarch-20041215/#def-information-resource > > > > I don't think that means that words are not information resources. > > I think it may depend on what you mean by "words". I don't think so. I don't think there's any (reasonable) meaning of "words" where the TAG has decided that w:InformationResource has no intersection with it. > If http://example.org/doc.html identifies a single resource, and the > associated document is updated to correct typos, then clearly > http://example.org/doc.html is identifying more than just the words that > are *currently* served from that URI: it is identifying a document > *abstraction*, rather than a particular document instance or a > particular set of words. I don't see how "all of [the] essential > characteristics"[10] of that document *abstraction* can be "conveyed in > a message"[10]. No? It seems to me that we do that pretty routinely. In any case, I don't see the relevance of that example to the question of whether w:InformationResource intersects wordnet:Synset. A more relevant example is something like http://sigma.ontologyportal.org:4010/sigma/WordNet.jsp?word=frog&POS=1 If Adam Pease says that URI refers to the word "frog", I don't see how that conflicts with anything the TAG has written. Adam may correct typos in his representation(s) of the word frog. (This is not to say that I think it would be wise; as I wrote in my paper, "I suggest adopting w:InformationResource rdfs:subClassOf frbr:Work as a practical constraint." and I don't think wordnet synsets are frbr:Works. But maybe it's coherent to say that some are. Hmm. anyway... I'm not giving advice here; just trying to clarify the position of the TAG. ). > Similarly, if http://weather.example.com/oaxaca identifies a single > resource that is "a periodically updated report on the weather in > Oaxaca"[10], then I don't see how "all of [the] essential > characteristics"[10] of that periodically updated report can be > "conveyed in a message"[10]. Again, it seems to me that we do this routinely. Maybe it takes more than one message and webarch is a bit sloppy here. In any case... > Because "information resources" can return different "representations" > at different times (even if some happen to return the same > representation every time), it seems to me that "information resources" > are by their very nature abstract. Please be careful with your quantifiers. Your argument seems to go from: There are some information that have more than one representation and hence are abstract to All information resources have more than one representation. On the contrary, I think the IETF has made it pretty clear that http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc822.txt has just one representation. And they haven't done anything to make the resource itself distinguishable from its representation, so if they said the 2 are identical, that would be coherent. Likewise, W3C has bound the URI http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/REC-xhtml1-20020801/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd to a particular sequence of bytes/characters. > Clearly the notion of an "information resource" is modeled after the > real life notion of the contents of a (logical) disk region, on a Web > server, that is associated with a URI "racine". (The "racine" is all of > the URI except the fragment identifier.[11]) The server is configured > to return those contents, whatever they are, when the URI racine is > dereferenced. And those contents may change over time! Thus, the URI > racine is not identifying any *particular* contents, it is identifying > the logical *location* where those contents are stored, and the server > provides whatever contents happen to be stored there at the moment they > are requested. Yes, but W3C and the IETF promise that some parts of our disks won't change. > In fact, it is not even possible on the Web to create a URI that is > permanently bound to a single document instance that can never change: I gave 2 counter-examples above. > it is *always* possible to change the server configuration or domain IP > mapping to cause a different document instance to be served. That would be a bug, in the 2 cases above. > In other > words, an http URI on the real Web identifies a logical *location* whose > content *always* has the potential of changing. I don't agree. > Similarly (I argue), an > "information resource" is *necessarily* abstract. Thus, if something is > not abstract, then it cannot be an "information resource". I don't find this argument convincing. > So returning to your comment about whether a word could be an > "information resource", it depends on what you mean by "word". If an > alternate spelling of "color" is "colour", then we are referring to an > abstract notion of a word, whose spelling may vary. However, if you are > referring to particular sequence of characters that can be transmitted > over the network, that is a *concrete* notion of "word", and thus cannot > be an "information resource". > > > > > I tried to cover this in a recent submission to IRW2006... > > > > [[ > > Note that the TAG has not taken a position on whether > > w:InformationResource intersects with rdf:Property. ]] > > -- "An analysis of httpRange-14" section > > http://www.w3.org/2006/04/irw65/urisym#hr14 > > Great paper! > > [8] TAG httpRange-14 decision: > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2005Jun/0039.html > > [9] Tim Bray's proposed definition of "information resource": > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2003Jul/0377.html > > [10] WebArch definition of "information resource": > http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-webarch-20041215/#def-information-resource > > [11] Definition of "racine": > http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/log#racine > > David Booth -- Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/ D3C2 887B 0F92 6005 C541 0875 0F91 96DE 6E52 C29E
Received on Wednesday, 3 May 2006 14:45:13 UTC