- From: <noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com>
- Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:06:30 -0400
- To: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>
- Cc: Alan Ruttenberg <alanruttenberg@gmail.com>, Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>, Jonathan A Rees <jar@mumble.net>, W3C-TAG Group WG <www-tag@w3.org>
Tim Berners-Lee wrote: > We wondered whether it would be good idea to put together some > kind of a task force under the TAG to propose set of these > axioms and an ontology. I'm certainly willing to support at least some further exploration of whether this would be a good idea. One cautionary thought occurs to me: we've tried for some time to set out the semantics of HTTP more informally, in English (I.e. to further clarify the implications of RFC 2616). At least we've tried to set down important bits of it, such as what a 303 implies, etc. Agreement hasn't typically been easy. Sometimes when one expediates the formalization of such things, it adds exactly the rigor (rigour?) and clarity necessary to proceed quickly and yield a clearer result. Sometimes trying to formalize before one agrees informally makes the whole discussion that much harder and more cumbersome. I really have no clear intuition as to how this one would go. So, I'm quite willing to try it with HTTP, but if it doesn't start to feel good pretty quickly, I'd be tempted to ask whether we should instead set a rule that we don't go too far in formalizing any bits (e.g. 303 implications) until we can at least get heads to nod in agreement on an informal explanation. Noah -------------------------------------- Noah Mendelsohn IBM Corporation One Rogers Street Cambridge, MA 02142 1-617-693-4036 --------------------------------------
Received on Wednesday, 17 October 2007 02:05:32 UTC