Authors describing what their URIs mean

From: "Charles McCathieNevile" <charles@w3.org>

> Right. And the best way to do that is for the creator of the URI to say
what
> the URI means, not for a third party to guess and then assume that their
> guess is correct. (Until we get the telepathic web).

Right!!  And where the URI is a URL to a web page, the best way to do that
is simply to embed the RDF description of exactly what the author intended
the URI to denote right there between <head> ...</head>.

The strange thing, that I can't figure out, is: even though the W3C
recommends this (see quote form M&S below ),  one can almost never find such
descriptions on their pages.

   Why?

Of course, we also need a good schema that would deconfuse these use\mention
terms like "denote", "name", "reference", "describes", "models", "sinn",
"bedeutung"  .....

Seth

Quoting:  http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-rdf-syntax/#transport

"Descriptions may be associated with the resource they describe in one of
four ways:

1.  The Description may be contained within the resource ("embedded"; e.g.
in HTML).
2.  The Description may be external to the resource but supplied by the
transfer mechanism in the same   retrieval transaction as that which returns
the resource ("along-with"; e.g. with HTTP GET or HEAD). "

...[snip passages that don't apply] ...

"The recommended technique for embedding RDF expressions in an HTML document
is simply to insert the RDF in-line as shown in Example 7.7. "

Example 7.7:

<html>
<head>
  <rdf:RDF
    xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
    xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/metadata/dublin_core#">
    <rdf:Description about="">
      <dc:Creator>
 <rdf:Seq ID="CreatorsAlphabeticalBySurname"
   rdf:_1="Mary Andrew"
   rdf:_2="Jacky Crystal"/>
      </dc:Creator>
    </rdf:Description>
  </rdf:RDF>
</head>
<body>
<P>This is a fine document.</P>
</body>
</html>

Received on Saturday, 14 April 2001 12:03:26 UTC