Re: Announcement: The "info" URI Scheme

Garret Wilson writes:

> Fine---there needs to be a standard solution for finding out "where
> authoritative descriptive metadata resides." We can all agree that
> this is a problem. So?

For resources retrieved via HTTP, my preference would be for a header
like See-Also or Description, which contains a URI reference indicating
a resource providing a machine-readable description of the requested
resource.

> "Everything HTTP" is one answer that has the side-effect of confusing 
> the resource with its metadata. There are surely thousands of other 
> answers. Here are a few off the top of my head. (I'm not proposing 
> them---I'm just pointing out that there are thousands of other answers 
> that don't have the same semantic deficiencies.)

While it's possible to interpret HTTP URIs in inconsistent ways, there's
no requirement that you have to. As an example, let's say
<http://example.com/joe> denotes Joe Example. When you dereference you
might get a picture or a web page or some RDF, depending on how the
request is phrased. In all cases, the actual response would include a
Content-Location header telling you that the picture, say, can be found
at <http://example.org/joe.jpg>. Thus, there is no confusion between Joe
and his picture, bio, and FOAF file.
-- 
David Menendez <zednenem@psualum.com> | "In this house, we obey the laws
<http://www.eyrie.org/~zednenem>      |        of thermodynamics!"

Received on Sunday, 5 October 2003 00:53:28 UTC