RE: Generic-Resources-53: URIs for representations

I agree there is no problem from a theoretical perspective, but it would
be awful from an expository perspective.

David Booth, Ph.D.
HP Software
dbooth@hp.com
Phone: +1 617 629 8881
  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Patrick Stickler [mailto:patrick.stickler@nokia.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 2:58 PM
> To: Booth, David (HP Software - Boston)
> Cc: Dan Connolly; www-tag@w3.org; raman@google.com; Williams, 
> Stuart (HP Labs, Bristol)
> Subject: 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 19:03:29 UTC