Re: The range of the HTTP dereference function

IMHO

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roy T. Fielding" <fielding@apache.org>
To: "Tim Berners-Lee" <timbl@w3.org>
Cc: <danc@w3.org>; "'www-tag'" <www-tag@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 7:56 PM
Subject: Re: The range of the HTTP dereference function


> > Here is my argument the HTTP URIs (without "#") should be understood as
> > referring to documents, not cars.
> 
> I am more curious about how this artificial "without #" distinction came
> about.  I think it was a mistake, one of many embodied in RDF that make
> RDF incapable of reasoning about the Web.

I don't understand where you are coming from, here.

The URI spec tells us that the significance of the URI with the hash
on is a function of the language of  document you get when you
dereference the thing before the hash.  Therefore, for an RDF document,
RDF defines what the thing *with* the hash identifies (anything)
but the HTTP spec has a lot to say about the process of dereferencing
something to the left of the hash.  So RDF can't for example say that
the thing before the hash identifies a telnet port.

The distinction doesn't come from RDF, it comes from the URI.
That what allows RDF to talk about anything.
Which is what makes it such a wiz-bang language for reasoning
about the Web.

I'd like you to elaborate what you meant by RDF not being able to
reason about the web, as we are obviously on different wavelengths! :-)

tim

Received on Wednesday, 20 March 2002 18:40:02 UTC