Re: httpRange-14 Adjunct: 302 is Valid for Non-Information Resources

On 4 Dec 2007, at 16:55, Sean B. Palmer wrote:
> Generally if I request an HTTP URI and it sends me back some RDF
> giving properties of the resource denoted by the URI, I take that as
> authoritative.

Yes. But the vast majority of HTTP URIs are for traditional web pages,  
and those don't return any RDF. We are left to guess what they  
identify. Web pages? People? Things? Automated tools have no way to  
tell, and hence it's not really possible to make RDF statements about  
those URIs with any confidence.

This sucks, because RDF was originally created to ... wait for it ...  
express metadata about those traditional web pages.

httpRange-14 axiomatically declares that for all those URIs, the  
“naïve” interpretation is correct: They identify “the Google home  
page”; “Richard's homepage”; “the TAG blog”; and so on. They do not  
identify companies, people, and so on. Hence it becomes viable to use  
RDF for saying things about web pages.

> Why do we need this weird implicit and useless classing
> via HTTP responses?

Because otherwise, we would have no clue what http://inamidst.com/sbp  
identifies. Thanks to that 303 thing, we know that it identifies a web  
document, and a snapshot of it currently sits in my browser window.

Best,
Richard


>
>
> -- 
> Sean B. Palmer, http://inamidst.com/sbp/
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 17:30:12 UTC