- From: Joshua Allen <joshuaa@microsoft.com>
- Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2002 14:01:52 -0700
- To: "Tim Bray" <tbray@textuality.com>, "Dan Connolly" <connolly@w3.org>
- Cc: "Roy T. Fielding" <fielding@apache.org>, "Sean B. Palmer" <sean@mysterylights.com>, <www-tag@w3.org>
+1 I would recommend not mentioning HTTP at all. I *would* recommend adding three sentences regarding URIs in general: "If two people independently use the same URI as an identifier, they should be able to have a reasonable degree of confidence that they are identifying the same resource. People should not be required to parse, dereference, or otherwise acquire any *additional* disambiguating information to provide this basic guarantee. Resource naming practices should be considered carefully, and people are strongly discouraged from naming resources in a manner that unnecessarily weakens this guarantee." > -----Original Message----- > From: Tim Bray [mailto:tbray@textuality.com] > Sent: Monday, July 29, 2002 11:33 AM > To: Dan Connolly > Cc: Joshua Allen; Roy T. Fielding; Sean B. Palmer; www-tag@w3.org > > Dan Connolly wrote: > > > Whether http URIs can identify cars and such or not isn't observable > > from the HTTP protocol itself. > > Indeed. And given that the server can decide to send back whatever it > $#^!%#&!@ well wants to (and I've written a lot of server code that uses > some *very* non-obvious inputs in deciding what to emit in response to a > URI)... > > And given that outside of RDF, the Web architecture has no built-in way > at all to talk about what a resource "is"... > > the only world-view that makes sense to me is what my section 1.1 draft > says, a resource is just whatever it happens to be, you can get > representations of it by asking (sometimes), and you can make assertions > about it regardless of whatever it "is", whatever "is" means, whatever > "means" means, and neatly dodge all the metaphysical bushwah. > > And the more I think about it, the less I can believe in any special > distinguished status or limitations for HTTP URIs, aside from noting the > obvious fact that they have the useful advantage of a well-defined > builtin protocol for requesting/receiving representations. -Tim
Received on Monday, 29 July 2002 17:02:53 UTC