Re: URIs / URLs

From: "Aaron Swartz" <aswartz@swartzfam.com>

> I think the major confusion in this document is the mistaken belief that a
> network entity is the same as the resource.
...[snip good stuff] ...
> This seems to be a major source of confusion.

I tend to agree.  It seems to me that there are three major kinds of
confusions here, then of course there are combinations of those:

1) (map\territory) A confusion of the Resource (the real \ or ideal thing)
with the entity that represents it in the network.  Sometimes the only thing
that exists is a network entity, but sometimes RDF descriptions which are
netword entities represent real or idea things and sometimes web pages are
designed to represent real \ ideal things.

2) (use\mention) A confusion of the identifier of the Resource with the
Resouce itself.

3) (identify\retrieve) A URI can do two things: identify a resource,  and
specify a method of retrieving the network rendering of it.  This dual
functionality is a source of endless confusion.  When a URI is used as a
subject or predicate of a RDF statement, it is functioning as an identifier
... but when it is used in the object it may also be describing a method of
retrieving a network entity.  Example:

language: N3

    :URIdiagram :seeURL <http://robustai.net/mentography/uri.gif>

language: English

The M&S specification is one source of our confusions
see (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-rdf-syntax/#model ) where it says

     "There is a set called Statements, each element of which
     is a triple of the form  {pred, sub, obj}  Where pred is
     a property (member of Properties), sub is a resource
     (member of Resources), and obj is either a resource or
    a literal (member of Literals)."

I think that should read something more like:

     "There is a set called Statements, each element of which
     is a triple of the form  {pred, sub, obj}  Where pred is
     a property (member of the identifiers of Properties),
     sub is a resource (member of identifiers of Resources),
     and obj is either a identifier of a  resource or a literal
     (member of Literals)."

language: Semenglish
Seth
    semTitle "Seth";
    uri "http://robustai.net/~seth/index.htm" ;
    (wants to show you) http://robustai.net/mentography/uri.gif .
"Seth"
    identifies Seth;
    a Literal.
"http://robustai.net/~seth/index.htm"
    identifies Seth;
    a URI.
semTitle a Property;
    takesObject Literal.
NetworkResource
    subClass Thing.

Received on Tuesday, 10 April 2001 15:25:12 UTC