Re: Proposed rewrite for section 3.1

Hi Henry, TAG,
(sweo-ig for the records)

As we discussed in the Telco, we cannot have a version of this section 
where everyone is equally happy. I tried to shorten your proposal.

 From your proposal I use:
* title
* parts of your text

I remixed it resulting in this:
It is important to understand that using URIs, it is possible to 
identify both a thing (which exists outside of the web) and a web 
document describing the thing. For example the person Alice is described 
on her homepage. Bob may not like the look of the homepage, but fancy 
the person Alice. So two URIs are needed, one for Alice, one for the 
homepage or a RDF document describing Alice. The question is where to 
draw the line between the case where either is possible and the case 
where only descriptions are available.
According to W3C guidelines ([AWWW], section 2.2.), we have an Web 
document (there called information resource) if all its essential 
characteristics can be conveyed in a message. Examples are a Web page, 
an image or a product catalog. The URI identifies both the entity and 
indirectly the message that conveys the characteristics.
In HTTP, a 200 response code should be sent when a Web document has been 
accessed, a different setup is needed when publishing URIs that are 
meant to identify entities.
In the next section, solutions are described that allow you to mint URIs 
for things and also allow clients to get a description of the thing 
using standard web technologies.

thank you for the input!

regards
Leo


It was Henry S. Thompson who said at the right time 20.03.2008 19:46 the 
following words:
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> I've had a quick try at redrafting section 3.1 of https://gnowsis.opendfki.de/repos/gnowsis/papers/2006_11_concepturi/html/cooluris_sweo_note.html#distinguishing
>
> 3.1 Distinguishing between representations and descriptions
>
> Above we assumed that there is a distinction between accessing web
> documents on the one hand and accessing descriptions of resources on
> the other. The question is where to draw the line between the case
> where either is possible and the case where _only_ descriptions are
> available..
>
> According to W3C guidelines ([AWWW], section 2.2.), we have a Web
> document which we can access directly (there called information
> resource) if all its essential characteristics can be conveyed in a
> message. Examples are a Web page, an image or a music recording. The
> URI identifies both the entity and indirectly the message that conveys
> the characteristics. There are of course also entities whose
> characteristics can not be conveyed in a message.  For such entities,
> _only_ descriptions of the entity are available for retrieval It's
> crucial to not be confused by the fact that a Web document may itself
> often describes some other entity, which is not itself a Web
> document. For example the person Alice (not a Web document) is
> described by her homepage (a Web document). Bob may not like the look
> of the homepage, but fancy the person Alice.
>
> Since our advice above is to only use a 200 response code when a Web
> document has been accessed, it follows that when designing URIs and
> configuring web servers we need to know when we're talking about
> identifying Web documents as such and when we're talking about
> descriptions of entities, whether they are Web documents or not.
>
> Our recommendation is to err on the side of caution: Whenever an
> object of interest is not clearly and obviously a document (all its
> essential characteristics can be conveyed in a message), then it's
> better _not_ to respond with a 200 to a request for the URI
> identifying it.
>
> [Hmm, this is probably useless, but maybe it helps a bit]
> - -- 
>  Henry S. Thompson, HCRC Language Technology Group, University of Edinburgh
>                      Half-time member of W3C Team
>     2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW, SCOTLAND -- (44) 131 650-4440
>             Fax: (44) 131 650-4587, e-mail: ht@inf.ed.ac.uk
>                    URL: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/
> [mail really from me _always_ has this .sig -- mail without it is forged spam]
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>   


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Received on Friday, 21 March 2008 06:05:51 UTC