Re: Determining what a URI identifies

Hi Tim,

I think we're (and Larry) talking at cross-purposes here.

On Mon, Nov 04, 2002 at 02:17:17PM -0500, Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
> 
> Mark, on: Saturday, November 02, 2002 9:15 PM:
> 
>  > Section 2.5 of the arch doc, point 1 says;
> >
> > "The authority over a URI determines which resource it identifies."
> >
> > I believe that what a URI identifies is determined principally by *use*.
> > The publisher is, of course, the authority on what it *should* identify,
> > but it's up to them to ensure that they use the tools at their disposal
> > to clearly communicate that to the world, lest the world think it
> > identifies something else.  But in practice, I'd say, the world always
> > has the final say, though with the proviso that the publisher has the
> > power to change, given sufficient time, what the world believes it
> > identifies.
> 
> 
> I disagree.  It is the model for natural language
> but not for specs. W3C and IETF (etc) specs determine what identifiers
> identify and langauges mean.  if you allow arguments that misuse
> changes the meaning then you open the whole stack to destruction
> (by for example those who falsify email headers.)

Not at all.  Depending upon one's opinion of httpRange-14 (which I'm
not trying to reopen!), either http URIs identify "network accessible
resources", or they identify "anything.  Either way, what I'm talking
about is *which* "network accessible resource" or "thing" a particular
URI identifies.  Neither IANA, RFC 2396, nor RFC 2616 sec 3.2.2 have
anything to say about that.

The line in the Arch doc that triggered this thread was;

  "The authority over a URI determines which resource it identifies."

And I assumed it was talking about the authority part of the URI, not
IANA.

MB
-- 
Mark Baker, CTO, Idokorro Mobile.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.
http://www.markbaker.ca             http://www.idokorro.com

Received on Monday, 4 November 2002 14:49:30 UTC