Re: [httpRange-14] What do HTTP URIs Identify?

At 09:52 AM 8/1/02 -0500, Aaron Swartz wrote:
>>>>>Again, you are confusing the ability for a web page to identify a 
>>>>>donkey with the requirement that it does. I would argue that the web 
>>>>>page only identifies the donkey if one was careful to state that it 
>>>>>did. An example of such a page is: http://logicerror.com/myWeavingTheWeb
>>>>So what, sir, is the algorithm for determining that no one had 
>>>>carefully stated tha a web page was a donkey?
>>>Visiting the page and reading through it. As I said, as we move into the 
>>>Semantic Web we'll need RDF properties and HTTP headers to provide this 
>>>information in a machine-processable way, but that's true about many 
>>>things. I don't see how that's a deal-breaker.
>>Maybe that's the killer here?  If you can only determine the meaning of 
>>some RDF when online and able to visit the page, that greatly reduces the 
>>utility of RDF, IMO.
>
>Well, you can obviously determine the meaning by reading trusted RDF 
>files. If it says it's a foaf:Person it's a good bet the URL doesn't 
>identify a document. If you had asked me what the method is for finding 
>out if a URL is a web page about a baseball team, I would have suggested 
>something similar (visit the page and see) but this does not preclude RDF 
>descriptions of such things! (nor does it mean we must assume all HTTP 
>URLs identify web pages about baseball teams, just to be safe)

Well, actually, I was questioning the case that trusted RDF files may not 
be accessible.  (Bill dealt with that point in his response.)

>>    <http://example.org/myCar> ex:colour ex:Red .
>>Suppose that I already know that ex:colour and ex:Red are to be 
>>interpreted as describing the colour of the subject resource in the way 
>>that we (as English speaking people) might expect.  Am I to conclude 
>>that: the web page at <http://example.org/myCar> is substantially red?
>
>Well, you probably know that the domain of ex:coulour is abstractThings so 
>myCar must be an abstract thing and you wouldn't need to dereference the 
>page. If someone else says something which leads you to believe it's a 
>webPage then you have a contradiction and you resolve it the way you 
>normally do: see who you trust more, check the page, etc.

Here I'm thinking of precisely the case that I don't know that about the 
domain of ex:colour.  And it seems like the kind of property that could 
apply to a document resource AND the thing it describes.

I'm not sure that I want to deal with the kind of complexities you seem to 
embrace in what is (to me) a baseline system for describing stuff.  I think 
it's most useful to take a view that any URI identifies a single 
concept.  (Now different folks may have different ideas about what that 
concept is, but I think that's a kind of problem to deal with later when 
some basic mechanisms are bedded in.)

#g


-------------------
Graham Klyne
<GK@NineByNine.org>

Received on Thursday, 1 August 2002 13:27:11 UTC