- From: Jonathan Rees <jar@creativecommons.org>
- Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:08:15 -0500
- To: "www-tag@w3.org" <www-tag@w3.org>
Larry, At the telecon you said: > <masinter> I think there's a 'category error', mixing specifications > of languages and their semantics with recommendations about best > practice for operational behavior, and making the semantics depend on > the operational behavior actually following best practice I agree but would be interested to know what you mean specifically. The httpRange-14 rule seems to fit this pattern. There are clearly two camps, one that says that GET/200 is required to respect identification semantics (MUST) and another that any such meaning is only a result of someone choosing to apply recommended practice (SHOULD) [1]. Backers of httpRange-14 fall in both camps and they take different attitudes toward situations where the rule isn't followed. Tim and others in the former camp, I and others are in the latter, we all like httpRange-14, and we've been fighting about this question unproductively for years (like the fabled circular firing squad). If you're talking about HTTP 1.1: I did a quick survey and it appears all of the REST-ish semantics in RFC 2616 - that is, anything that talks about the resource and therefore might be at the same level of analysis as httpRange-14 - are under SHOULDs, not MUSTs. The PUT method description is a good example of "here's what we meant it for, but who are we to say". Link:, site-meta, and description resource discovery are all at the protocol level - they take no hard position on what the protocols are for or what any resource "is", leaving that up to their applications. There may be intent but I don't yet see a category error in how they're being prosecuted. Best Jonathan [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2003Jul/0317 - just as pertinent now as it was then!
Received on Tuesday, 10 February 2009 15:08:52 UTC