Re: Clarifying what a URL identifies (Four Uses of a URL)

On Tue, 2003-01-21 at 13:59, Tim Bray wrote:
> David Booth wrote:
> >   Quoting from the abstract:
> > 
> > [[
> > URLs can be used to identify abstract concepts or other things that do 
> > not exist directly on the Web. This is sensible, but it means that the 
> > same URL might be used in conjunction with four different (but related) 
> > things: a name, a concept, a Web location or a document instance. 
> > Somehow, we need conventions for denoting these four different uses. Two 
> > approaches are available: different names or different context. 
> 
> I remain unconvinced.  One of the strengths of the Web architecture is 
> its uniform naming framework where URIs identify resources and yield 
> representations of them, and resources can be anything ranging  web 
> pages to schools of philosophy.  The Web Architecture has no built-in 
> way to talk about what a Resource "is", and seems to get by just fine. 
> RDF is all about talking about what a resource is.  If you need to know 
> what kind of thing a resource is, publish some RDF assertions to that 
> effect.  What am I missing?
> 
> Now, I think that a nice pre-cooked RDF vocabulary of general categories 
> of things that resources can be - your note being a first step to that - 
> is quite likely worth investing in.  But Web Architecture in the large 
> doesn't depend on it at all.  -Tim

I'd like to recommend that what Tim just said be in the architecture
somewhere. Its succinct, clear and unambiguous....

-MM

Received on Tuesday, 21 January 2003 14:06:23 UTC