- From: Martin Duerst <duerst@w3.org>
- Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 17:02:37 +0900
- To: "Joshua Allen" <joshuaa@microsoft.com>, "Dan Brickley" <danbri@w3.org>, "Norman Walsh" <Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM>
- Cc: <uri@w3.org>, <msabin@milessabin.com>, <tbray@textuality.com>
Overall, I have to agree with Roy, who makes the most detailled
and consistent argument, and is most familliar with the questions
and comments that readers of the document make.
With respect to Joshua's comment below, I'd like to point out that
a large number of languages has a mechanism to distinguish between
things that have been named/described, and things that haven't been
named/described. It's the distinction between the definite and the
indefinite article. For example: "I went to the store and bought
*an* ice cream, and then I went to the beach and ate *the* ice
cream." Of course, the context for this distinction is usually
much smaller than the global one assumed in the URI spec.
And while many languages have such a distinction, many others
don't.
Regards, Martin.
At 14:44 04/05/24 -0700, Joshua Allen wrote:
> > > Conversely, what harm is caused by saying that it isn't
> > > (yet) a resource?
>
> > case, the concept adds little but confusion to our explanation of URIs
> > and the Web.
>
>At some point, and for some scenarios, it makes sense to have words that
>can distinguish between:
>
>B. "things which have been named"
>C. "things which have not been named"
>D. "things which have not been named but nevertheless have been
>described"
>
>For example, these distinctions can be useful when teaching grammar and
>logic. However, I think that such distinctions are confusing when used
>gratuitously. Unless there is a necessity to distinguish between those
>types of "things", then it's better to just use the non-restricted
>definition, and then introduce new terms when you absolutely need to
>distinguish between different types of "things". We normally do not
>make such distinctions in normal communication ("I went to the store and
>bought some things, but only things which have names, although the
>subcomponents of those things may not have names..."). If you start
>making such distinctions, people are bound to ask "why?", and start to
>ascribe unwarranted significance to the distinction, as we saw in the
>previous wording of the resource definition.
Received on Tuesday, 25 May 2004 04:37:45 UTC