Re: The range of the HTTP dereference function

[norm comes back from vacation and stumbles into the middle of a bunch of
 threads, some possibly stale...]

/ "Tim Berners-Lee" <timbl@w3.org> was heard to say:
[...]
| I think you are taking my meaning of the word "document" too strictly.
| I would include that called "The Bible" as a document.  I would
| not call my car a document.  A picture of it, yes.
| Its home page, yes. Not the car.

Can you clarify this distinction a little bit for me? It's not
immediately obvious to me what criteria you are applying to
distinguish the bible (l/c because one man's god is another man's
belly laugh) and Dan's car?

1. If the bible is a document, I presume that Gideon's Bible is a document.

2. If Gideon's Bible is a document, is the copy of Gideon's Bible in my 
   hotel room also a document?

3. If that copy of Gideon's Bible is a document, can I refer to it by URI?

4. If that copy has a URI, then you've got a URI to a physical thing, why can't
   I have a URI to Dan's car? That's a physical thing too.

5. If that copy doesn't have a URI, can I have a URI to the concept of "car"
   (e.g, not Dan's car but "car" like not this bible but "bible")?

6. If I can't have a URI to Dan's car because it fails some (documentp ...) test,
   can I have a URI to it if I scratch the text of the bible into its paint?

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM   | To the man who is afraid everything
XML Standards Engineer | rustles.--Sophocles
XML Technology Center  | 
Sun Microsystems, Inc. |

Received on Thursday, 18 April 2002 10:26:01 UTC