- From: Alan Ruttenberg <alanruttenberg@gmail.com>
- Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2009 10:59:29 -0400
- To: Xiaoshu Wang <xiao@renci.org>
- Cc: Karl Dubost <karl+w3c@la-grange.net>, Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>, Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>, "Roy T. Fielding" <fielding@gbiv.com>, Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com>, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>, Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>, W3C TAG <www-tag@w3.org>
On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 9:32 AM, Xiaoshu Wang<xiao@renci.org> wrote: > Alan Ruttenberg wrote: >> >> We call this "categorization". It doesn't fragment, it organizes. With >> the organization come benefits: predictability, auditability, >> understandability. Whereas we have at the beginning "anything is >> possible in all cases" (which we know isn't really true - we recognize >> brokenness on the web all the time) with this sort of categorization >> we can start to articulate why some things work as expected and other >> things don't. >> > > It is true -- that "it organizes". But the issue is what is suppose to be > organized. Don't you all feel strange that all your discussions have never > mentioned the word "representation"? No. I personally try to avoid using it whenever possible because as far as words go, it's one of the more inconsistently used. I can't remember how many senses of "representation" we've gone over in AWWSW but it's more than one wants. > GET, POST, DELETE neither > GET/POST/DELETE a URI nor a Resource. It GET/POST/DELETE a representation. Yet *another* interpretation of the verbs. Are people afraid enough yet? > Resource/things are not web-specific. The Web is designed to help us > (humans) organize things. But the Web should post no constrains on how each > of us should organize our things. I don't know what you are talking about. First, we're not talking about constraining the web, we're talking about ways of communicating. Second it is the nature of protocols to constrain things so that it's possible to have coordination. That's why there's only a handful of verbs and response codes. If any server could respond in any which way to any request then we wouldn't be able to build browsers. > Aligning "document" or "information resource" with resource, i.e., lies in the heart of all these troubles. Try > the other way, align document with representation, all things will start to fall in places. There's nothing to align to. Representation, in the web spec, is a term effectively defined as "200 responder". It is whatever a server chooses to return. And we're having a little problem pinning down "Document", as well. So I don't see how to move forward with your suggestion. -Alan
Received on Tuesday, 4 August 2009 15:00:25 UTC