RE: What is at the end of the namespace?

On Wed, 21 Nov 2001, Martin Duerst wrote:

> At 13:29 01/11/19 +0200, Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com wrote:
> >Because other folks expect that an HTTP URI *is* dereferencable,
> >hence all the (IMO needless) bruhaha over "what's at the end
> >of a namespace".
> 
> At one point, I proposed here at W3C that even if we didn't
> have anything really serious to point at for a namespace
> uri, we should put up a page that says something like
> "This is just a page that is here in case you tried to
> dereference this uri, the uri is the uri for the foo
> namespace. This page also helps to make sure that this
> uri isn't reused for something else." I guess there might
> be some namespaces at W3C that have something similar now.

Martin,
The W3C already does this.  In fact, there is a variety of stuff at the
end of W3C namespace URIs.  A few examples:

XHTML - http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml - resolves to HTML page
RDF - http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns# - resolves to RDFS
P3P - http://www.w3.org/2001/09/P3Pv1 - resolves to XML schema
SMIL - http://www.w3.org/2001/SMIL20/ - resolves to HTML page

:-(

So, I'll ask the same question I asked a few days back...  if I make an
RDF statement about http://www.w3.org/2001/SMIL20/, am I making a
statement about the abstract SMIL namespace or am I making a statement
about the HTML page that the uri resolves to?

The only answer I got last time suggested that I'd be making a statement
about the abstract concept.  If this is the accepted view, then I still do
not underdstand how I make a statement about the HTML page that uri
resolves to.  Presumably, the dc:creator of the abstract namespace is not
the dc:creator of the HTML page at the namespace uri - so there are valid
reasons for wanting to make RDF statements about both.  As far as I can
tell, http://www.w3.org/2001/SMIL20/ is the only uri for that HTML page so
I don't see how else I can make a statement about it.

This feels like a very fundamental and simple question to me!  

Regards,

Andy
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Received on Wednesday, 21 November 2001 04:54:49 UTC