Re: WebID definition proposal with hash urls

On 16 Nov 2012, at 00:32, Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net> wrote:

> 
> On 16 Nov 2012, at 00:27, Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net> wrote:
> 
>> The way to change the spec is to propose textual spec changes. Could those who wish
>> to support the #url simpliciations please put forward some clear text that the editors
>> can add to the spec, so that people can then vote on it. 
>> 
>> I think this does simplify the spec, and it does not break anything, since we had already
>> agreed to Turtle and RDFa being a MUST.
>> 
>> Currently we have is:
>> 
>> WebID:
>> 
>> <blockquote src=" https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/WebID/raw-file/tip/spec/index-respec.html " >
>> A URI that refers to an Agent - Person, Robot, Group or other thing that can have Intentions. The WebID should be a URI which when dereferenced returns a representation whose description uniquely identifies the Agent who is the controller of a public key. In our example the WebID refers to Bob. A WebID is usually a URL with a #tag, as the meaning of such a URL is defined in the document refered to by the WebID URL without the #tag .
>> </blockquote>
>> 
>> WebID Profile
>> 
>> <blockquote src=" https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/WebID/raw-file/tip/spec/index-respec.html" >
>> A structured document asserting the relationship between the Subject (identified by his WebID) and his Public Keys using relationships as defined by the Resource Description Framework [RDF-CONCEPTS] and published at the URL location of the Subject's WebID. Dereferencing the WebID should return the Profile Page in one of a number of formats. The Server must publish the document in at least the RDFa [RDFA-CORE] serialization format or in Turtle [TURTLE-TR]. The document may be published in a number of other RDF serialization formats, such as RDF/XML [RDF-PRIMER], or N3 [N3]. Any other serializations that intend to be used by the WebID Protocol must be transformable automatically and in a standard manner to an RDF Graph, using technologies such as GRDDL [GRDDL-PRIMER]. 
>> </blockquote>
>> 
>> 
>> Proposal 1: with hash urls
>> ===========================
>> 
>> 
>> a) A WebID is a URI [1] whose scheme is either "http" or "https" and that contains a fragment identifier.
>> The WebID denotes an Agent ( Person, Organisation, Group, Software, ...). The URI without the hash denotes the WebID Profile. 
>> 
>> b) A WebID Profile is a web resource that MUST by default return a TURTLE document, but that
>> can return other RDF serialisation formats if requested through content negotiation. The RDF 
>> graph expressed by this turtle document MUST contain a number of relations containing the WebID 
>> that uniquely identify the referent of the WebID.
> 
> My problem with this definition is that we now need to define a special type of WebID Profile for WebID over TLS, since in the WebID over TLS spec we need the profile document to contain a public key.

Ok. we can probably work that out somewhere else in the spec.  We would need to have a part of
the "WebID Authentication over TLS" Spec to say how to create a WebID Profile for the protocol.
This would start with 

  1. creating a public key ( using keygen  )
  2. adding it to the profile document with the cert relation
     [ in LDP using a PATCH perhaps ]

By the way the philosophical/logical terms for "uniquely identify" is "definite descriptions".
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definite_description
   http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descriptions/

For those who feel an urge to protest at using philosophical terms, let me just point out in 
advance that the word denotation is such a term. It comes up in classical books such as "On Denotting"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Denoting
Also often Frege's Original work was translate "Sense and Reference" but some people argue it should
be translated "Sense and denotation".

Now if people want an introduction to the whole subject, and a high level guide I recommend
Gareth Evens' The Varieties of Reference 
http://www.amazon.com/Varieties-Reference-Clarendon-Paperbacks/dp/0198246862

But perhaps we don't want to go into such a high level view either. Still the notion of a Definite Description could be useful.


> 
>> 
>> Proposal 2:
>> ==========
>> 
>> like proposal 1 but 
>> 
>> b) the WebID Profile MUST either return RDFa or Turtle 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> [1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Social Web Architect
>> http://bblfish.net/
>> 
> 
> Social Web Architect
> http://bblfish.net/
> 

Social Web Architect
http://bblfish.net/