RE: Describing the "nature" of a resource

Good point.  And interestingly, this lack of appropriate distinction
between resources and representations is *exactly* one of the issues
with the current draft of the GRDDL spec that I have been privately
discussing with Jeremy Carroll.  (Jeremy represents HP in the GRDDL
working group, along with Brian McBride.)

David Booth, Ph.D.
HP Software
+1 617 629 8881 office  |  dbooth@hp.com
http://www.hp.com/go/software 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-tag-request@w3.org [mailto:www-tag-request@w3.org] 
> On Behalf Of Williams, Stuart (HP Labs, Bristol)
> Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2007 5:47 AM
> To: Norman Walsh; www-tag@w3.org
> Subject: RE: Describing the "nature" of a resource
> 
> 
> Hello Norm,
> 
> I think the assertions that tried out below are assertions 
> about nature
> of some representations, rather than assertions about 
> resources (except
> indirectly in cases where the resource has a single 
> representation that
> is either invariant over time or the assertions are maintained in sync
> with changes).
> 
> Stuart
> --
> Hewlett-Packard Limited registered Office: Cain Road, Bracknell, Berks
> RG12 1HN
> Registered No: 690597 England
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: www-tag-request@w3.org [mailto:www-tag-request@w3.org] 
> > On Behalf Of Norman Walsh
> > Sent: 16 May 2007 21:38
> > To: www-tag@w3.org
> > Subject: Describing the "nature" of a resource
> > 
> > At the last TAG f2f, we discussed namespaceDocument-8. We're 
> > going to do it again at our next f2f and I'd really like to 
> > make progress.
> > 
> > As I understood discussion[1] at our last f2f, one of the 
> > most significant issues with our current draft[2] was raised 
> > by Dan. Dan expressed skepticism over the way we'd proposed 
> > to model natures.
> > 
> > (Note that we've introduced a conceptual model that doesn't 
> > have to bear a 1:1 correspondence with any particular RDDL 
> > syntax so this discussion is, at least for the moment, about 
> > the model and not the particular URIs used by RDDL.)
> > 
> > The current draft says that natures have URIs and we identify 
> > the nature of a resource with those URIs.
> > 
> > For example:
> > 
> > <http://docbook.org/xml/5.0b1/rng/docbook.rng>
> >    assoc:nature <http://relaxng.org/ns/structure/1.0> .
> > 
> > asserts that the nature of the docbook.rng file is a RELAX 
> NG grammar.
> > 
> > The concern raised was that such a statement is a statement 
> > of opinion and not of fact. This is even easier to see in 
> > cases like HTML 4 where we assert the nature of a resource by 
> > pointing to its normative specification. It's not hard to 
> > imagine the existence of formats for which the normative 
> > specification is *clearly* a matter of opinion.
> > 
> > Dan suggested instead that we should ground natures in fact. 
> > For example,
> > 
> > <http://docbook.org/xml/5.0b1/rng/docbook.rng>
> >    xxx:docRootEltName ("http://relaxng.org/ns/structure/1.0" 
> > "grammar") .
> > 
> > This "docRootEltName" property points to a list which 
> > identifies the namespace name and local name of the root 
> > element. This clearly is a matter of fact, not opinion.
> > 
> > Personally, I'm just as happy with assertions in this case, 
> > but I did agree to attempt to find facts we could use. I've 
> > taken the current list of natures and considered how we might 
> > ground them in fact:
> > 
> > CSS                     content-type    text/css
> > DTD                     content-type    application/xml-dtd
> > Mailbox                 ???
> > Generic HTML            content-type    text/html
> > HTML 4                  ???
> > HTML 4 Strict           ???
> > HTML 4 Transitional     ???
> > HTML 4 Frameset         ???
> > XHTML                   docRootEltName  xhtml:html
> > XHTML 1.0 Strict        ???
> > XHTML 1.0 Transitional  ???
> > RDF Schema              ???
> > RELAX NG Schema (RNC)   content-type    
> > application/relax-ng-compact-syntax
> > RELAX NG Schema         docRootEltName  rng:grammar
> > Schematron Schema       ???
> > OASIS Open Catalog      ???
> > XML Catalog             docRootEltName  cat:catalog
> > XML Scheam              docRootEltName  xs:schema
> > XML Character Data      ???
> > XML Escaped             ???
> > XML Unparsed Entity     ???
> > IETF RFC                ???
> > ISO Standard            ???
> > 
> > For some, we can rely on the content-type, I think. And for 
> > others, the document root element name. But for many, I don't 
> > see an obvious answer and so I'm not sure how to proceed.
> > 
> > Suggestions most welcome.
> > 
> >                                         Be seeing you,
> >                                           norm
> > 
> > [1] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2007/03/07-morning-minutes
> > [2] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/nsDocuments/
> > --
> > Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> | The perfect man has no method; or
> > http://nwalsh.com/            | rather the best of methods, which is
> >                               | the method of no-method.-- Shih-T'ao
> > 
> 
>

Received on Thursday, 17 May 2007 20:23:50 UTC