Re: Uniform access to descriptions

Jonathan Rees wrote:
>
> On Apr 10, 2008, at 12:13 PM, Xiaoshu Wang wrote:
>>
>> I don't want to be annoying.  But please make a clear and objective 
>> definition of *description* for UA2D.
>>
>> Honestly, I don't think how you can separate UA2D from httpRange-14 
>> because you can only define *description* w.r.t.  IR or non-IR.
>
> "What is a description" is a good question. I will interpret it to 
> mean "what did JAR mean by 'description'".
I didn't get it. :-(
> The wiki page [1] does not define the term, but it does say 
> "Descriptions might include information about the thing such as 
> bibliographic metadata, factual information, reviews or assessments, 
> related materials, access control or licensing information, etc.".
This is really what gives me the problem, I don't know why these 
information should (or need to) be modeled in HTTP LINK. 

Jonathan, please don't take my insistence on a definition for 
*description* in a bad way.  I really have a hard time to picture what 
*description* is.  We already have an ambiguous concept of IR that has 
caused so much problem and we still didn't settle on the relationship 
between /representation/, /resource/, URI, and HTTP.  And if a new 
concept, such as /description/ comes out, I cannot imagine how much more 
messy the situiation will be.  That is the reason why I want Phil and 
you to postpone the LINK solution because only do we know how TAG 
settles on the relationship between the above mentioned entities can we 
know what is not defined and then fit in its structure accordingly.

Xiaoshu

Received on Friday, 11 April 2008 16:12:00 UTC