Re: The range of the HTTP dereference function

Joshua Allen wrote:
>
> I think the problem is very simple.  If you declare that
> http://www.markbaker.ca/ represents the physical you, then you lose the
> ability to make assertions about the resource that is returned when you
> do a GET on that URI.  If you want to let some URIs do one thing and
> others another, you need a way for people (and machines) to figure out
> what the "default" sense of that URI is.  The other possibility is to
> *always* specify (when recording metadata about a URI) what sense you
> are using the URI.  This last option seems like the only safe one to me,
> since people obviously are insisting on using HTTP URIs to assign
> metadata about things that are *not* GET-able resources.

http://www.markbaker.ca/ can easily both identify "Mark Baker", the person,
and be GETable.

The media type image/jpg _representation_ might be a picture of Mark.
The media type text/html _representation_ might be an HTML page which Mark
uses to describe himself.

and on.

Now if Mark decides that the HTML page which is his text/html representation
_itself_ should be a resource which can itself be described, he can either
give it another URI e.g. + "index.html" or whatever he chooses.

I see no reason why only "document" type resources _need be_ the only
GETable resource.

Jonathan

Received on Wednesday, 27 March 2002 18:09:26 UTC