- From: <noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com>
- Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:32:53 -0400
- To: wangxiao@musc.edu
- Cc: Alan Ruttenberg <alanruttenberg@gmail.com>, Mikael Nilsson <mikael@nilsson.name>, Richard Cyganiak <richard@cyganiak.de>, W3C-TAG Group WG <www-tag@w3.org>
Xiaoshu Wang writes:
> - The URI identifies the city.
>
> - The *representation* that people gets back by dereferencing the
> URI with HTTP protocol is your *impression*.
I don't think the word impression is really appropriate here. Let's say
that I assign resource http://example.org/nonRhymingPoem to the poem that
is popular with American school children:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Some poems rhyme,
Some don't.
If you do an HTTP GET to that URI I send you back an HTML page. The text
of the poem is more or less centered. It's set out in some font of my
choosing, in 25 point italic. The background is purple. I don't think
the most appropriate way to describe that in English is to say that it's
my impression of the poem. It's the way I choose to render the poem for
your perusal. In fact, it's quite appropriate to say that the HTML page
is the way that I choose to represent the program.
Furthermore, I don't think we need to insist that this particular URI is
only for the poem rendered in those fonts, unless that's what I say the
URI is for. If I say that it's for the poem, and in a year or so someone
comes up with a font I like better, I see no problem with my changing the
page to use that. The URI still identifies the poem, since I say it does
(presuming I've registered example.com). The HTML pages are still
representations of the poem, they are not my impressions of it.
FWIW: my impression of the poem is that it's moderately funny.
> - Your *impression* about the city is NOT the *city*.
Right. If I offered http://example.org/NoahsImpressionsofnonRhymingPoem
then its representation might be:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Some poems rhyme,
Some don't.
is funny!
Noah
--------------------------------------
Noah Mendelsohn
IBM Corporation
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
1-617-693-4036
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Received on Tuesday, 23 October 2007 21:31:38 UTC