how to recognize non-http resources identified by http uris

hello.

i am still curious about an answer to the question how the http 303 
status is supposed to work for "plain web" users. for semantic web 
users, 303 probably simply acts as a hint to go fishing for rdf. if i 
get a 303 as a plain web user, though, this only indicates to me that 
the server may see this as an indication that the uri identified a 
non-http resource, or it may just be a web servers that happens to 
return a 303 for some other reason. i am still curious to hear about the 
w3c consensus on this 303 approach. how is somebody thinking about a 
scenario that involves (a) non-http resources (my use case were 
locations), and (b) no semantic web technologies, supposed to make this 
work? is there some preferred or recommended way of doing it? from 
earlier discussions on this list, there were two possibilities:

- there is some magic prefix that indicates that the uri in fact 
identifies a non-http resource.

- the original resource contains some simple metadata that it is only 
(or also) a proxy for something else.

any clarification of that issue would be highly welcome.

thanks a lot,

dret.

Received on Thursday, 14 February 2008 23:48:52 UTC