Re: Generic-Resources-53: URIs for representations

If one considers the representation as the atomic unit of the web,
then one can say that a representation is a discrete stream of
bytes and a representation of a represenation is always bit-equal
to itself.

If one has a URI which the URI owner asserts denotes a representation,
then that's what it denotes, and dereferencing it should result in
getting back that discrete sequence of bytes that is the representation
in question. A URI which supposedly denotes a representation would  
always
return the exact same sequence of bytes every time it is dereferenced.

So no problem with a representation being denoted by a URI, and one
need not worry about having "turtles all the way down".

C.f. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-interest/2004Oct/ 
0076.html
for more thoughts on this.

Cheers,

Patrick



On Oct 4, 2006, at 13:40, ext Booth, David (HP Software - Boston) wrote:

>
>> From: www-tag-request@w3.org [mailto:www-tag-request@w3.org]
>>
>> On Oct 2, 2006, at 7:31 AM, Williams, Stuart (HP Labs, Bristol)  
>> wrote:
>>> I think that in creating webarch [2] we tried to maintain a fairly
>>> clear distinction between resources and representations (modulo
>>> anything can be a resource!). In that world view, IIRC, it
>>> was "resources" rather than "representations" that have URIs.
>>
>> Er... you just noted yourself that anything can be a resource.
>>
>> As such, I think it's not too harmful to speak of URIs for
>> representations.
>
> I rather strongly disagree.  For one thing, it is apt to lead to
> unnecessary confusion.  For another thing, once one of those
> representations has a URI and it responds to http requests, we'd be in
> the rather uncomfortable position of having to refer to what it  
> returns
> as "the representation of the representation" -- not a direction I  
> think
> we want to go.
>
> Please find some other term to use.  I'll just through out a few more
> ideas to stimulate thinking:
>
> 	snapshot
> 	view
> 	custom view
> 	presentation
>
>>
>>> [1]
>> http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/alternatives-discovery-20060915.html
>>> [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch
>
>
> David Booth, Ph.D.
> HP Software
> dbooth@hp.com
> Phone: +1 617 629 8881
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 4 October 2006 18:59:03 UTC