Re: Summary: Section 2: What does a URI identify?

Very nice.  My comments;

- re the editorial note about b-nodes.  The issue is not whether
something *has* an identifier, but whether it *could*.  Same goes for
last paragraph in sec 2.2.  I believe b-nodes could, but I'm no RDF
guru.

- I'd suggest avoiding the use of the term "home page", as I believe it
to be an artificial construction by those who don't recognize that a
URI can identify a real life thing.  e.g. "Mark's home page is
http://www.markbaker.ca" is equivalent to "http://www.markbaker.ca
identifies Mark".  In order to know what "http://www.w3.org" identifies,
you have to ask the W3C.  I assume that it identifies the organization.

- "Dereferencing a resource identifier yields a representation of the
current value of the referenced resource".  This is tricky, because
"current" can mean many things.  I'd suggest removing "current value of
the".

- "or indeed after it has been retired".  I'm not so sure if this is the
case or not (though I would guess that it is not), but I don't believe
it relates to the statement about how the identity of a thing can be
assigned at the time of conceptualization, rather than the time of
realization

- "a URI consists of [...] and an optional fragment identifier".  Oops!
8-)  A URI does not include a fragment identifier!  Ditto for 3.1;
"If a URI contains a[sic] sharp character [...] is a fragment
identifier".

- sec 3.1 appears to be a bit schizophrenic. Fragment ids are for
identifying part of a resource representation, not a resource.  Also,
I don't consider them a "design flaw" - they do what they are intended
to do perfectly, people just use them in odd ways (RDF).  Plus you may
want to pick a different example than the HTML one, because of the name
vs. id issue.

- "This does not mean that the stream of bits associated with a URI
(if, in fact, there is one) can never change".  "the stream of bits"
appears to suggest a single stream, when many are possible.  I don't
believe "associated" captures the resource/representation distinction.
And re "if, in fact, there is one" - I believe it a property of all
resources, that there will always exist at least one representation
of each.

- "it is perfectly reasonable for a resource to be identified by several
different URIs".  True, but less is best.  How about "it is acceptable
for", or something less encouraging than "perfectly reasonable"

MB
-- 
Mark Baker, Chief Science Officer, Planetfred, Inc.
Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.      mbaker@planetfred.com
http://www.markbaker.ca   http://www.planetfred.com

Received on Sunday, 17 March 2002 10:12:06 UTC