- From: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
- Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2001 09:00:56 -0500
- To: pat hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
- CC: w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org
pat hayes wrote: [...] > >But meanwhile, the 10 year history of the Web > >is evidence that this axiom is useful; can we agree that > >for the purposes of the RDF spec, every document is in the Web? > > No, we cannot. I refuse to accept as an axiom something that I know > to be false and, moreover, I know to be false because I can make it > false in a few seconds by writing something with a pen on a piece of > paper. Again: *for the purposes of the RDF spec*. The thing you write with a pen on a piece of paper is not in scope of the RDF spec. Unless you happen to be scribbling RDF on a piece of paper; but even then, if you regard it as an RDF document, I'm asking that you agree that it has a URI. The reason is that this is the way the XML specs work. There are two coherent designs: (a) an XML document's base URI is intrinsic to that document. We speak of "the base URI of a document." If you copy some <stuff/> from one place in the Web to another, the result is a different XML document. (b) an XML document may be paired with a base URI, but that base URI isn't intrinsic to a document. The same <stuff/> appearing at different addresses in the Web is the very same XML document. The XML specs (XPath first, I believe, then Infoset, schema, etc.) use design (a). Since the choice is arbitrary, as far as I can tell, it would be silly for RDF to try to use (b). [I'd rather not continue, in this forum, the philosophical discussion about which things have names and which things can have names etc. Sorry I started it.] -- Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
Received on Sunday, 24 June 2001 10:00:59 UTC