RE: The range of the HTTP dereference function

Joshua Allen wrote,
> Absolutely!  You are agreeing that we need a way to clarify in which
> "sense" the URI is being used.  If I store a triple that says,
> "http://www.markbaker.ca/ looks-like http://www.joethomas.fr/", this 
> is meaningless unless I specify that whether I mean the "text/html" 
> or the "image/jpg" associated with that URI.
>
> We need to allow that distinction to be made, and we need to allow it 
> to be made without requiring the resource or it's representation to 
> be online at the time it is made (or consumed).

To clarify, are you saying that those bare URIs are ambiguous (between
the 
text and the image) until supplied with some disambiguator (eg. an
Accept: 
header in the online case, metadata in the offline case, some other 
formal or informal convention, or the use context)?

If so, I think that's pretty much right.

But I think it also allows Mark to stipulate that
http://www.markbaker.ca/ 
refers to him too: in which case the bare URI is triply ambiguous:
between 
him, the text and the image. The fact that Mark himself isn't
retrievable 
by a GET doesn't strike me as particularly problematic so long as we
allow 
that the very act of GET'ing will resolve any ambiguity in the bare URI
in 
a way which is guaranteed to miss Mark and latch onto one of the other 
two.

Cheers,


Miles

Received on Wednesday, 27 March 2002 19:01:52 UTC