Re: [namespaceDocument-8] 14 Theses, take 2

At 06:54 PM 27/02/02 -0500, Tim Berners-Lee wrote:

I'm with Tim on points 1-4.

>5. Where all the information available can be expressed in one (not too
>long) document then an indirection for the sake of it is an engineering
>mistake.  So clients should be prepared to accept information directly or
>indirectly, ideally.

Here I disagree strongly.  Indirection is cheap and its benefits
are high.  We should create an expectation that in the normal case (a 
plurality of definitive resources) the author will show responsibility
by providing a directory to them.  And I continue to think that
the namespace with a single defining document is an architecturally
uninteresting corner case. 

>6. Where content negotiation is used, it should only be used to negotiate
>between documents which really are equivalent - they basically say the same
>thing in a different language.  For example, it would not be appropriate to
>give and RDF schema and XML schema for a namespace because they really
>contain different information, and a machine or human would be fooled into
>thinking it knew the import of a document, when really it had been given
>something different.

Good catch.  I had envisioned people saying "get me a schema"
and saying whether they wanted XSD or Relax or DTDs via 
content-negotiation.  I guess that would be unsound.  -Tim

Received on Thursday, 28 February 2002 14:42:42 UTC