- From: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:35:25 -0500
- To: www-tag <www-tag@w3.org>
I don't see how to make sense of this "MUST NOT resolve directly to a representation" in http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xri/AbstractIdentifierArchitecture last edited 2008-09-04 01:42:20 Consider: a1 resolves to d1 d1 contains c2 c2 resolves to r2 So a1 is abstract, right? But then I can make another resolution mechanism by composing the original "resolves to" with extracting concrete identifiers from descriptions and resolving them: def resolves2(ident): try: r = resolve(ident) return r except OnlyDescriptionAvailable, d: for c in d.concrete_identifiers(): try: r = resolve2(c) if r: return r except: pass now resolves2(a) = r2. So I guess a isn't abstract after all. Perhaps it would make sense to define abstractness _with respect to a given resolution mechanism_ a la: Identifier I for resource X is abstract with respect to resolution mechanism L there is no representation R of X where L resolves A to R. All this is to say: whether an identifier is abstract or not is not a property of the identifier itself. Is info:abcdef abstract? Well, maybe today, but if the connection between that sort of identifier and representations of the resources they refer to is sufficiently valuable, someone will deploy a new resolution service, and suddenly info:abcdef is no longer abstract. -- Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/ gpg D3C2 887B 0F92 6005 C541 0875 0F91 96DE 6E52 C29E
Received on Thursday, 18 September 2008 16:35:36 UTC