- From: <noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com>
- Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2002 08:52:40 -0500
- To: Paul Prescod <paul@prescod.net>
- Cc: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>, www-tag@w3.org
Paul Prescod writes: >> You want the processor to infer the type of an >> object from the syntax of its URI? What happened >> to opacity of URIs? I've thought for awhile that the whole question of URI opacity might be something that the TAG would do well to clarify. At some level, opacity is indeed an important, and the need to treat URI's as opaque is often misunderstood. At other levels, it's clear that URIs are not opaque after all: retrieval strategy is often (but not necessarily, I think?) keyed to the scheme; RFC 2396 makes clear that hierarchical names are supported architecturally with "/" syntax. In short URI's are not nearly as opaque as, for example, GUIDs. So, I think the TAG would do the community a service if it would, in the course of dealing with the other URI-related issues on the table, provide a little more clarity on the senses in which URIs are and are not opaque. (For the record, I'm not suggesting anything is broken -- just that going back to the first time I saw TimBL's articulation of the opacity principle I've felt that a bit of clarification would be helpful.) Thanks. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Noah Mendelsohn Voice: 1-617-693-4036 IBM Corporation Fax: 1-617-693-8676 One Rogers Street Cambridge, MA 02142 ------------------------------------------------------------------
Received on Wednesday, 6 November 2002 08:53:24 UTC