RE: opaque uris and self-describing resources

 

Erik Wilde wrote:
> Sandro Hawke wrote:
> >> so i assume to discover the non-http nature of the resource 
> >> identified by u1, there must be some content within the returned 
> >> resource that makes that statement. logically, i see three 
> ways how 
> >> the non-httpness of the identified resource could be established:
> >> 1. string matching with a magic prefix 2. the 303 returned when 
> >> dereferencing the uri 3. embedded metadata in the returned 
> resource 
> >> what is the official vote on these? it seems that (2) is required, 
> >> but it cannot be sufficient given the rather general definition of 
> >> 303 in http. would (1) be ok? or is that discouraged? i am 
> sure that 
> >> (3) is the w3c's favorite given its inherent rdfness, but i am 
> >> wondering whether in this whole approach there still is a 
> chance for 
> >> non-semantic web users to understand the non-httpness of 
> the resource identified by u1.
> > The TAG reached consensus on 15 Jun 2005 to use option 2.  
> That is not 
> > as "official" as a W3C Recommendation or a new IETF RFC for 
> HTTP, but
> > it's what we've got.   See:
> >    http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/issues.html#httpRange-14
> 
> sorry, my question was not clear enough. if i dereference an 
> http resource and get a 303, based on http alone, that can 
> mean almost anything. does the tag finding chnage that to 
> always mean that if i get a 303, it *always is* a non-http resource? 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2005Jun/0039 
> looks to me as if this were not the case ("the resource 
> identified by that URI could be any resource" means it could 
> also be an information resource, right?). 
> so as someone getting a 303, i need some additional way of 
> establishing the non-http nature of a resource, right? the 
> 303 alone does not tell me enough, it only tells me that i 
> should look for further hints to establish the nature of the 
> resource, because it could be non-http. so
> (2) only lets me start, but i need more to really understand 
> the nature of the resource. i am sure option (3) above is 
> something the w3c likes, but it would make the non-httpness 
> of a resource visible to semantic web agents only. option (1) 
> above would make that easier, and most people in recent weeks 
> seemed to favor this approach. i am curious to hear your 
> opinion about this second step in the whole process.

How about (1), (2), and (3), i.e. an HTTP Header returned by U1?

-- 
-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org
http://atlanta-web.org

Received on Wednesday, 16 January 2008 21:53:04 UTC