Re: Disambiguation; keeping the "U" in "URI"

> On Thu, Apr 25, 2002 at 11:58:34AM -0400, Sandro Hawke wrote:
> > In HTTP, when you say "GET foo", it should be read as "GET the
> > contents currently stored in foo".  
> 
> RFC 2616 does have some text in it which is unfortunate, but I believe
> I heard Roy say that it was the best he could get concensus on.
> 
> Since you're more on-side with TimBL than Roy here, let me bring up a
> point that I believe demonstrates an inconsistency in TimBL's thinking;
> 
>  "Any place I can use a URI I can use any URI."
>   -- http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/UI.html
> 
> and take your choice of any HTTP RFC;
> 
>   "Request-Line = Method SP Request-URI SP HTTP-Version CRLF"
>   -- RFCs 1945, 2068, 2616
> 
> This demonstrates that HTTP can be used to resolve any URI, not just
> those in the HTTP URI scheme.  The reason this is so, is because
> HTTP GET is defined/designed to be general enough to do this.  See
> WIRE[1] for example.
> 
> So, if HTTP GET is this general, and the HTTP URI scheme is bound to
> HTTP's application semantics (and currently, the HTTP protocol itself),
> then doesn't it follow that HTTP URIs can't identify anything?  If not,
> why not?  Where's the flaw in my thinking?

Hm.   Perhaps you're reading Tim's line above wrong, or he might be
purposefully over-generalizing, or maybe he's changed his mind.
Unfortunate.  

> > While I think this is by far the most logical, consistent, and widely
> > held view, it doesn't work to well with
> >    <> dc:creator [whatever].
> > unless you read dc:creator to be talking about the content retreived
> > from the thing which is it's rdf subject, which is kind of a stretch.
> > 
> > What happens when the document at some location is replaced by one
> > with a different creator?  A whole raft of dc:creator triples become
> > incorrect.   Sigh.
> 
> There is absolutely no problem with doing this, so long as you have
> enough URIs to maintain uniformity.  Let's say that a restaurant
> publishes a daily menu;
> 
> http://restaurant.example.org/menu/
> 
> This URI identifies the current menu for the day.  Each day, GET will
> return something different.
> 
> Now let's say that yesterday, our Chef de Cuisine created the menu.  He
> publishes it at;
> 
> http://restaurant.example.org/menu/2002-04-24.html
> 
> So we can say;
> 
> <http://restaurant.example.org/menu/2002-04-24.html> dc:Creator
>  <http://restaurant.example.org/people/chef-de-cuisine/>
> 
> A GET on "http://restaurant.example.org/menu/" yesterday would have
> returned the content from that URI, with the Content-Location header
> set to its URI.
> 
> Today, the Chef de Partie creates it;
> 
> <http://restaurant.example.org/menu/2002-04-25.html> dc:Creator
>  <http://restaurant.example.org/people/chef-de-partie/>
> 
> and a GET on /menu/ would return that content with the Content-Location
> header set.
> 
> What's the problem with that?

The problem is that it doesn't match my mental model, or (according to
my mental model) the mental model of many web users.

But that doesn't prove you're wrong.  I'm going to propose a possible
solution, but I think I'll do it on another thread here.

    -- sandro

Received on Friday, 26 April 2002 11:31:55 UTC