Re: universal languages

Sean B. Palmer <sean@mysterylights.com> wrote:

>> What I don't see the reasoning behind is the insistence that
>> URI's should be used to name *everything*.
>> (its a bit like insisting that HTML consist of nothing but URL's,
>> with no actual text allowed),
> So what's the alternative: string literals?

Exactly -- just because you give something a URI doesn't mean that URI has
any meaning, nor that it is the only URI that can be used to refer to that
thing. DanBri can speak on this subject more than I, but I think a lot of
RDF work will be dedicated to combining the same thing but identified by
different URIs.

What URIs give us is the _option_ to work in our own space, and not step on
anyone else's toes. They also give us a reasonable system for giving things
names, and even providing information on those names to some extent.

Perhaps this would work better if you tell me what you have in mind instead
-- I'm not too familiar with the other choices in this area, but I have a
feeling that they likely all collapse into subsets of URIs. Like RDF genids,
for example.

(I'm just an unofficial member of the URI cheerleading squad) ;-)
-- 
[ Aaron Swartz | me@aaronsw.com | http://www.aaronsw.com ]

Received on Monday, 5 February 2001 16:27:20 UTC