- From: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
- Date: 30 Aug 2002 11:13:18 -0500
- To: Larry Masinter <LMM@acm.org>
- Cc: www-tag@w3.org
On Fri, 2002-08-30 at 10:55, Larry Masinter wrote: > > I think the TAG has had difficulty in trying to > apply some kind of theory of semantics to what was > originally designed as computer network protocol > element. > > As a HTTP protocol element to a proxy server or > in a HREF in a HTML document, "http://www.w3.org" > is unambiguous enough, but taken as language, > it can be used to denote a wide variety > of items, depending on the context of use: the > web server at www.w3.org, the actual page you retrieve > when you do a HTTP GET on port 80 to the DNS name > www.w3.org with a "GET / HTTP/1.1", or the organization > of "The World Wide Web Consortium". > > There's a transfer of meaning (cf. > "Transfers of Meaning", Nunberg, > http://www-csli.stanford.edu/%7Enunberg/JOS.html > ) > > I don't think you can get far without acknowledging > that using URIs as semantic identifiers carries more > ambiguity than as a protocol elements. I agree. Meanwhile, I think there's a network-effect-style benefit, if not an architectural princple, about using URIs consistently in the linguistic sense. i.e. there are real benefits to everybody that uses http://www.w3.org/ in a formal language to use it to denote the home page of the organization, and not for the organization, and not for any particular sequence-of-bytes-document. I started writing about this under "Can the same URI be used to identify different resources?" in http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/ures14 but I'm not satisifed that I've really made the point. -- Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
Received on Friday, 30 August 2002 12:13:08 UTC