--
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
D3C2 887B 0F92 6005 C541 0875 0F91 96DE 6E52 C29E
Forwarded message 1
As everyone here knows, the TAG has spent a great deal of time
discussing the httpRange-14 issue, as described at
http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/issues.html#httpRange-14
I am happy to report that we came up with a reasonable
compromise solution at the recent TAG f2f meeting at MIT.
<TAG type="RESOLVED">
That we provide advice to the community that they may mint
"http" URIs for any resource provided that they follow this
simple rule for the sake of removing ambiguity:
a) If an "http" resource responds to a GET request with a
2xx response, then the resource identified by that URI
is an information resource;
b) If an "http" resource responds to a GET request with a
303 (See Other) response, then the resource identified
by that URI could be any resource;
c) If an "http" resource responds to a GET request with a
4xx (error) response, then the nature of the resource
is unknown.
</TAG>
I believe that this solution enables people to name arbitrary
resources using the "http" namespace without any dependence on
fragment vs non-fragment URIs, while at the same time providing
a mechanism whereby information can be supplied via the 303
redirect without leading to ambiguous interpretation of such
information as being a representation of the resource (rather,
the redirection points to a different resource in the same way
as an external link from one resource to the other).
Cheers,
Roy T. Fielding <http://roy.gbiv.com/>
Chief Scientist, Day Software <http://www.day.com/>