Re: ISSUE-57: The use of HTTP Redirection

Richard Cyganiak wrote:
> 1. What are the reasons against settling on IRs for everything, and 
> ditching non-IRs completely? You mention the resulting confusion 
> between the document and the document's topic. Anything else?
There is no reason.  The problem is that you can NOT set all things up 
to be IR because some people wants to separate a person from his 
homepage.  For instance, if I want to say that "that page is ugly".  But 
if that URI for that web page also denotes a person, then I am also 
saying "that person is ugly". 

The point of httpRange-14  is to allocate different URI for DIFFERENT 
but RELATED entities.  Nothing-else.  At least this is how I understand it.
> 2. This boils down to a question wether to provide a representation of 
> a resource, or instead provide an associated description of the 
> resource (by means of a 303 redirect or hash truncation). What is the 
> difference between a representation and a description? Is it purely a 
> difference of delivery? Surely there must be a deeper difference when 
> we think it is necessary to provide both in WebArch?
I don't think it is either/or.  A resource can have both a description 
(in RDF) and a representation (non-RDF media type.  I do not think there 
is any clear philosophical or ontological definition to distinguish 
these two.  But I think WebArch should distinguish RDF media type from 
all others.  Hence, when getting an RDF document, you need to figure out 
from the document what the resource is.  Otherwise, you get (the 
representation of) what you want. 
> 2b. For bonus points, explain why, in order to reduce ambiguity, web 
> pages need representations but cars need descriptions.
Isn't this in the same spirit as my person/homepage example? If you own 
the car, it is the design decision that you have to make.  Just like Pat 
Hayes don't think that using a web page to denote himself  confuses 
anything, he has all the rights and reasons in the word to use his 
webpage to denote him.

The "why", if there is any, is not in the sense of absolute right or 
wrong.  It is the owner's intension that makes the choice. 

Xiaoshu

Received on Thursday, 30 August 2007 08:53:55 UTC