denotation of http://www.vrc.iastate.edu/magritte.gif

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The document http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/HTTP-URI has following 
exercise:

> 2) What does "http://www.vrc.iastate.edu/magritte.gif" identify?
>
> (...)
>    6. A representation as a series of 341632 bits in of a photo of a 
> painting
>    7. Validly 4, 5 and 6 but not 1
According to the document the correct answer is 7
> 2:7 Note here the web tolerates vagueness along the axis of different 
> representations of teh same image, but not of semantic level betwen 
> the image and the pipe.

I'm confused that the URI could identify 6. If the server serving the 
address is smart enough to return a jpeg insted of gif - if according 
to the http-accept header my browser is not capable to interpret a gif 
- - the URI would also identify "A representation as a series of 
[size-of-jpeg] bits in of a photo of a painting" and the URI is 
ambiguos.

I think a HTTP-URI should identify a document as the abstract entity 
that all of the possible result of a http-request represent, that is 
the document independently of encoding and language.

Cheers,
Reto
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Received on Thursday, 22 May 2003 16:55:15 UTC