- From: Simon St.Laurent <simonstl@simonstl.com>
- Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2000 08:59:53 -0400
- To: michaelm@netsol.com
- Cc: uri@w3.org, xml-uri@w3.org
At 08:31 AM 9/7/00 -0400, Michael Mealling wrote: >I'm well aware of the issues that some of the applications you care about >have with the general case of URIs and I sympathize. I share your >views that the case of the 'http' scheme being a 'generalized namespace' >is vastly distorted and in many cases dangerous (just my personal opinion) >due to its perceived uses and lack of rigorousness about its language. > >In that case my suggested solution to you is to not attempt to redefine >the entire space of URIs to adhere to your needs. Instead _design_ a >new scheme that does. That's why we kept the entire generalized concept >of URIs 'airy'. Its so that you can come along and design a scheme that >does exactly what you want without having to inherit a lot of semantics >that are incompatible with your application. Then further specify >that the application only works with a certain subset of the URI space. > >IMHO, I think such a scheme would have a lot of practical uses outside >your application. I also think that URNs might possibly satisfy them but >I'd have to sit down and have an extended conversation just to find out.... While I appreciate the reasonable suggestion, I think developing a new scheme simply for the sake of distinguishing the identifier from the resource without addressing those issues in general is inadequate. Partly this is because of history - lots of http namespace URIs are already out there, partly this is because of politics - some key people seem to find the use of such URIs not only acceptable but ideal, and partly this is because Namespaces in XML is only one example of a situation where URIs are used in this fashion. As noted earlier by a different writer, RDF has similar issues. I suspect those same issues will crop up in future uses of URIs as the implications of the 'URI way' become visible to a larger group of people. >The abstract concept of 'number' is pretty airy. The concrete case of >'positive integers' is fairly well constrained. The concept of URIs >should be viewed in the same level of the concept of 'number' and the >general case of 'number theory'. If your application needs the equivalent >of 'positive integers' then say so. Why do you insist on the rest of >us having to constrain ourselves to that new, more constrained definition? I think the 'rest of us' might well benefit from clearer distinctions between URIs and the resources they identify, from a comparison mechanism that simplifies URI processing, and from a foundation vocabulary that makes it easy to say "this scheme is subject to x, y, and z constraints". Apart from my general tendencies toward anarchism, that feels like a very good thing to me. Simon St.Laurent XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed. XHTML: Migrating Toward XML http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books
Received on Thursday, 7 September 2000 08:56:46 UTC