RE: Using fragment identifiers with URNs

Roy Fielding wrote:
> It is impossible to define a name that cannot be used for retrieval.
> The act of identifying has no responsibility for how that identifier
> is used.

No, but the act of defining an identifier scheme could be seen to have
that responsibility.  It seems reasonable for a scheme to clearly define
its intended use (although many schemes may make no such constraints).

> I doesn't matter what a given URN nid may claim about the 
> properties of an identifier in its namespace, the act of assigning a
> name provides the world with an identifier that might be used by some
> system somewhere, through some unknown number of indirect or redirected
> resolutions, to perform a retrieval of a representation of the concept
> identified by that name.
> 
> It is therefore never correct to say that a fragment is 
> scheme-dependent, even though there are some schemes that identify
> resources for which no representation is ever suitable for fragment
> references when those references are made within the Web system.

Thanks for that wonderfully clear and unambiguous statement of your
view of the principles behind URIs.  Does that represent the shared view
of the committee that created RFC2396, or is this your personal view?
(I'm not trying to suggest that you aren't an authority here, I'm just
trying to gauge whether or not I can consider the statements above
as definitive.)

I hadn't realised that RFC2396 was intended to say anything about what
applications *might* choose to do with URIs outside Web architecture,
but I see that is probably necessary so that URIs can be incorporated
into future techologies.

- Stephen

Received on Thursday, 27 September 2001 19:59:35 UTC