Re: Documents, Cars, Hills, and Valleys

----- Original Message -----
From: "Aaron Swartz" <me@aaronsw.com>
To: "Tim Berners-Lee" <timbl@w3.org>; "Sean B. Palmer"
<sean@mysterylights.com>; "Mark Nottingham" <mnot@mnot.net>
Cc: "RDF-Interest" <www-rdf-interest@w3.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 7:12 PM
Subject: Re: Documents, Cars, Hills, and Valleys


> On 2002-04-10 05:22 PM, "Tim Berners-Lee" <timbl@w3.org> wrote:
>
> > Because if you adopt the notion that
> > <http;//www.mnot.net/> a :Person.
> >
> > I would be forced to conclude that you, Mark, will expire
> > alas too soon: [1]
> >
> > Expires: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 09:14:08 GMT
> >
> > <http://www.mnot.net/> a :Person;
> >        http:expires "20020411T091408".
> >
> > which gives you only a few hours. Sad.
>
> Nonsense! You are confusing HTTP Entity headers with Resource headers. The
> Expires: header refers to the set of bits which you get back from the
> server, not the Resource that they are Representations of. If that were so
I
> would be forced to conclude that the W3C's website, www.w3.org, would
expire
> too soon:
>
> Expires: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:02:07 GMT
>
> which would make a mockery of the persistence policy. Sad.

Good point.  The "Expires:" refers in fact to the relationship between the
resource
*The W3 home page) and the set of bits.  That is what expires.
You can still claim that the realtionship is between the bits and the
person.

[...]

> > My point, which I  have made again and again, is that HTTP GET
> > is a protocol for talking about generic documents.
>
> No matter how many times you say it, it does not necessarily become true.

I am sorry. I guess teher is always an equal and opposite frustration.

> I
> would appreciate something more along the lines of specification
citations,
> rationale and things that break when HTTP Resources identify cars and the
> like.

If you say that an HTTP header identifies a car, and then a GET returns a
picture,
how do you refer to the picture?

> > You could imagine a protocol (say SWTP) which directly
> > responds to requests about things. [...]
> > But that protocol is not HTTP.
>
> I think it is.
>
> > HTTP has a lot of sophisticated design for the rendering of
> > generic documents.   To try and force it into swtp: functionality
> > is a kludge which would ruin it.
>
> Can you give an example? It seems to work pretty well for me.

Well, how do you represent what I would say as

[] a :standardsOrg;  :homepage <http://www.w3.org/>;
    is ipr:opyRightHolder of <http://www.w3.org/>;
    org:subGroup :tands, :wai, :df, :int, :arch.

<http://www.w3.org>  :isolang "en.us";
     http:representation [ in:contentType "text/html"; http:size "6576" ];
     dc:creator [ con:mailbox <mailto:janet@w3.org> ].

If the home page and the organization are the same,
how does that work?

tim

Received on Friday, 19 April 2002 18:20:39 UTC