Re: ERB call on addressing

At 02:34 AM 3/25/97 GMT, Gavin Nicol wrote:
>It really boils down to whether you think the Xptr is addressing
>something or not.

Yup.  Obviously.  Also, it's a query.  I totally fail to see the
utility, or even the existence, of a distinction between an
address and a query.  Given the URL 
 http://docs.sun.com/ab2/alluser/ADVOSUG/@xmlToc
tell me please, is that an address or a query?

>I have no problems with # and ?. I do not see how a query can name
>a sub-resource though, or how you can query a resource addressed
>using queries.

I have no trouble with this at all.  On the web, a resource is,
by definition, something that can be addressed.  So what a URL
points at is a resource.  By definition, what an Xptr points at
is also a resource.  Our innovation is to standardize (unlike
the web) a rich query-or-address-call-it-what-you-will for XML docs
which operates at a finer level of granularity than the URL.
Thus it makes intuitive sense, and is logically clean, to call
what the URL+Xptr gets you a sub-resource of the resource that
the URL gets you.

>Using ";" is accepted practise, and provides the right semantics
>for XML (addressing)

Based on my reading of the RFC's and my experience operating servers
and using the web, I disagree with both halves of this sentence.

Bill Smith has raised the issue of the RFC as a moving target, sigh...
existing RFCs talk of

 <path>;<params>?<query>#<fragment>

but "this year's model" is quite different.  However, no matter how you
cut it, ";" flags a vaguely-specified "parameter" we want something with
a highly-precise, and new-to-the-web, semantic.  Smells like new syntax
to me.  Also, ';' is obviously a moving target, which is another reason
to stay away from it.

BTW, you Inso and Sun guys ought to raise a ruckus with TimBL and
Roy Fielding, n'est-ce pas?

 -Tim

Received on Monday, 24 March 1997 22:17:38 UTC