- From: Larry Masinter <LMM@acm.org>
- Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 09:58:11 -0700
- To: www-tag@w3.org
I think the problem is that http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/metaDataInURI-31.html has looked at the problem from the wrong perspective. "...outside of their own authority (i.e. observers)..." I don't think the web architecture is (or can be) clear about the notion of "authority". It's some terminology that has crept into many of the discussions about URIs and their meaning, and I think it's misplaced. The only URI scheme registered that acknowledges that there might be an "authority" that "assigns" URIs is the "urn:" scheme. Most other URI schemes give an operational definition -- "http:" about using the HTTP, "ftp:" about using the file transfer protocol, "mailto:" about sending mail. I think what the finding is trying to get at could be better stated as follows: There may be policies and processes involved in creating or resources and other communication endpoints that can be reached using particular URIs, but an agent looking at or trying to interpret those URIs should not make any assumptions beyond those that are actually defined by the URI scheme definition itself. Since the HTTP protocol doesn't require that URIs ending in ".html" are really text/html, or that URIs not ending in ".html" are not, then an agent looking at a http URI shouldn't try to infer its type from the URI ending. (On the other hand, the definition of the "file:" URI scheme probably _should_ assign such meanings....) Larry -- http://larry.masinter.net
Received on Sunday, 28 September 2003 12:58:19 UTC