RE: CURIEs: A proposal

>In effect, you are saying that usage determines meaning, not
>architectural principles.  A URI in a SemWeb doc is treated differently
>than when in other situations.

Yes, exactly. Though not *all* URIs in SWeb docs, eg owl:imports uses 
GET and so do rdfs:seeAlso and a few others. These uses are 
conventional Web technology. (To properly align these uses with 
logical semantics takes some extra work in the specs which is in fact 
missing from the RDF and OWL specs, but is included in the RDF 'named 
graph' proposal and the more recent Common Logic ISO draft.)

>  Local system prevails.

Yes, although what is in the 'local system' might vary from use to 
use. The meaning of logical names is a function of the totality of 
descriptive capacity that is brought to bear on the task on making 
inferences, and this might involve RDF/OWL content brought together 
from any number of sources; so 'local' should not be thought of as 
document-centric: local to the current context of use of the name.

>Ok but it means there is an operational disconnect between two
>applications of the same abstraction: the URI.

Right. The architectural use *requires* the Web infrastructure; the 
inferential use only requires that the names have global scope.

>It also means the advice from some to use URNs instead of HTTP URIs for
>namespaces is good advice.

Well, it is kind of irrelevant from a strict inferential perspective; 
but I take your point.

I should say for the record that the line I have been arguing here is 
a very strict interpretation of the logical role of URIs. Not 
everyone in the SWeb world would agree with me, and sometimes I don't 
agree with myself. I wish the SWeb were better integrated with the 
conventional Web, and the two uses of URIs were more closely 
integrated (I see RDF-A as a step in this direction). But we will not 
achieve this richer future state merely by wishing that it were true: 
we need to put mechanisms in place to support it.

Pat

>len
>
>
>From: www-tag-request@w3.org [mailto:www-tag-request@w3.org] On Behalf
>Of Pat Hayes
>
>And the main point is that there is no actual *need* to put anything
>there in cases like this. The SWeb software which is designed to use
>URIs like this will never try to dereference them. That isn't what they
>are for.


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Received on Wednesday, 28 June 2006 21:40:10 UTC