- From: Simon St.Laurent <simonstl@simonstl.com>
- Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2000 17:19:15 -0400
- To: "Fielding, Roy" <fielding@eBuilt.com>, uri@w3.org
At 12:51 PM 9/7/00 -0700, Fielding, Roy wrote: >> Uniform processing for URIs would have saved a lot of us a >> hell of a lot of trouble, and still could. >> >> Leaving the spec as vague as possible may be exciting to some >> folks, and may avoid some categories of political irritation, but isn't >> useful to a large group of people faced with the task of figuring out >> exactly how these identifiers are supposed to work. > >The specification is not vague. It specifies exactly what is intended >by resource. URI is a syntax for a resource identifier. The URI does >not define the resource -- some person/author/community does. When you >GET on a URI, you retrieve a representation of that resource at the >time that the response was generated. 'Exactly what is intended by resource' still comes off as vague, to put it extremely politely. >There are literally millions of other things that could be said about >resources and about URI, but none of them could make the definition any >less incompassing without ignoring some aspect of resource space that >someone else depends upon. Furthermore, since HTTP depends on the >entire scope, it isn't going to be limited any further. There's a difference between ignoring aspects of resource space and providing a basic set of rules that allow generic URI comparison and processing. >> A spec that says "any way you want" isn't very much of a spec, is it? >> >> RFC 2396 isn't very far from that, I'm afraid. > >RFC 2396 defines everything you need to interoperate with real URI-based >systems. It doesn't have all the information that is in my dissertation, >but it is sufficient to develop any application I have ever seen, >including anything related to XML, RDF, and namespaces. Is there a URI for your dissertation? >The answer to your question is: if the existing definition of resource >is insufficient for your application, then your application is not designed >to handle the full scope of what a resource may be. Either live with >that limitation or fix your application. Unfortunately, working in XML, I have little control over which URIs I work with; it's not simply a matter of my choice or even my application. 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 17:16:07 UTC