- From: Jonathan Rees <jar@creativecommons.org>
- Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:00:10 -0400
- To: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>
- Cc: noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com, Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>, "Williams, Stuart (HP Labs, Bristol)" <skw@hp.com>, "www-tag@w3.org" <www-tag@w3.org>
(Sorry about the delayed response - been busy.) On Apr 6, 2008, at 10:28 PM, Tim Berners-Lee wrote: > I can't work out whether you are trying to attack HTTP-Range-14 > because you don't like it, or really you are confused about how it > works and why it is important, or whether you were trolling to stir > things up. >> The troll is likely to be the last person to know whether s/he is a troll, so I'm probably not the best person to ask. Am I attacking httpRange-14? I like httpRange-14. I do my best to follow it. I use 303s and advise others to use them wherever 2XX is not clearly wanted. I put the idea under stress so that I can understand and explain it better. After considerable research and modeling effort I still don't know what an information resource is supposed to be; I can identify some instances (maybe even 10^11 of them), and I know many things that are not IRs, but I don't feel that as I describe information-related things in RDF I have much ability to reliably predict what's an IR or what constitutes an acceptable awww:representation. If someone can teach me the definition, and how applications are substantially benefiting from the exclusion of 2XX for URIs of non-IRs, then it will be easier for me to explain the 2XX=>IR idea to the people I want to convert to the (semantic) web (see below). I am making a plea for particulars, whether implemented or not. Am I confused about how it works and why it is important? I understand that httpRange-14 says something that was already stated less explicitly in RFC2616, and I see how the intent is to require people to name things and their descriptions separately, and give a way to say that one of them is a page. I would say I am ignorant of how it is (or will be) exploited *in practice* and which particular *applications* go wrong when it's not respected. I can't say I'm aware of any situation, so far, in which it has helped me. But that's not a strike against it as it's still quite new. > There is a huge loss if a system is built which confuses an egg and > a page about an egg. This resolution avoids the confusion, for > those who might be confused. Of course these are different things, and the same URI shouldn't be used to name both, but httpRange-14 is only one way to encourage separate names and to indicate which URI names which thing. You could, for example, use type assertions to distinguish the egg from its page, either in the retrieved content or out of band (such as in a triple store or Link: header). I can see that giving ontological meaning to 200s is nice in a way since it attaches positive assertions to 10^11 things, and suddenly you seem to know something about them that without httpRange-14 you wouldn't have known. Except that *I* won't really have a good idea what logical conclusions to draw from something being an IR, or under what circumstances servers are allowed to respond with 2XX given what they want their URIs to denote, or where IR fits in to upper-level ontologies, because I'm not clever enough to understand the definition of IR. To you I appear to be obsessed with boundary cases; but I feel genuinely confused. > Perhaps you move in circles less acquainted with the web > architecture, and inclined to invent new systems without reference > to existing conventions. I do. I have occasion to talk to publishers, librarians, DBAs, and scientists, and to try to win them over to using URIs and web standards. Few of them know or care much about web architecture. They always think they know how to do it better, and are always reinventing wheels. The information they deal with is highly balkanized, and I want to change that, and weave their work into the web and semantic web. This is why it's important to me to have clear stories and high-quality specifications to back them up. > Wow. Just so that I gauge the way you use terms, would you say > that the statement that in the US the voltage between two flat > power pins is 110v alternating current is also a bit of pedantry > that provokes thought and helps to influence people to be honest? If I were to get a shock when I used a 200 where I should have used a 303, I'd agree that it's not just pedantry. I look forward to receiving such a shock! Jonathan
Received on Monday, 14 April 2008 14:00:58 UTC