Re: Question on the boundaries of content negotiation in the context of the Web of Data

Stuart,

Thanks for your vivid explanation and the nice questions in return.

>> ... is the PNG *representation* derived via conneg from the generic resource
>> <http://sw-app.org/sandbox/house> equivalent to the RDF in Turtle?

> Does't look like it to me...
> 
>> If not, why not?
> 
> The 'house' depicted in the PNG appears to have a red roof. The redness of the
> roof (amongst may other properties of the 'house') are not apparent in the
> turtle.
> ...
> ...

This is what I thought as well ;)

However, I'd be deeply grateful for references re my second question, which,
slightly rephrased and hopefully less ambiguous, reads as follows:

Are there any (draft or final) TAG findings or W3C notes or TimBL design
notes I'm not aware of re this issue? If not, I'd like to raise an issue
here (dunno if non-TAG members are allowed to do so; likely not, but
hopefully one of the TAG members jumps on that train).

Cheers,
      Michael

-- 
Dr. Michael Hausenblas
DERI - Digital Enterprise Research Institute
National University of Ireland, Lower Dangan,
Galway, Ireland, Europe
Tel. +353 91 495730
http://sw-app.org/about.html
http://webofdata.wordpress.com/


> From: "Williams, Stuart (HP Labs, Bristol)" <skw@hp.com>
> Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 13:53:25 +0000
> To: Michael Hausenblas <michael.hausenblas@deri.org>, "www-tag@w3.org"
> <www-tag@w3.org>
> Subject: RE: Question on the boundaries of content negotiation in the context
> of  the Web of Data
> 
> Hello Michael,
> 
> <snip/>
> 
>> Please note that I don't ask if this works. It does. Obviously. The
>> question, to put it in other words, is: is the PNG *representation* derived
>> via conneg from the generic resource <http://sw-app.org/sandbox/house>
>> equivalent to the RDF in Turtle?
> 
> Does't look like it to me...
> 
>> If not, why not?
> 
> The 'house' depicted in the PNG appears to have a red roof. The redness of the
> roof (amongst may other properties of the 'house') are not apparent in the
> turtle.
> 
> The only possible coherent fragment of information that could conceivably be
> the same between the two representations is a subject URI. In the case of the
> PNG (not that I'm familiar with the internal encoding of information -
> particularly if its more structured than an array of coloured dots or a list
> of lines, shapes and fills) whilst a human interpreting the picture might
> intuit that the juxtaposition of what appears to be a text string close to
> what appears to be a 'house' may be intended as naming the house with the
> string and that that named thing is the subject of, well what, I suppose the
> art, if we can call it art :-). However one is quite some distance from a
> machine readable assertion that http://swa-app.org/house.tll#my names any
> particular thing far less a house. There is also the question of what the
> media-type registration for PNG has to say about what the fragId should be
> interpreted as referring to; I don't know, I haven't looked.
> 
> The turtle representation, gives a machine readable assertion that claims
> http://swa-app.org/house.tll#my as a http://swa-app.org/house.tll#House
> (whatever one of those is).
> 
>> If it is, can you please point me to a finding, note, a
>> specification, etc. that 'normatively' defines what
>> 'equivalency' really is?
> 
> Do you think those representations are equivalent representations of whatever
> it is that you intend http://swa-app.org/house.tll#my to be an identifying URI
> of - (a conceptual red roofed house? a depiction of that concept? an actual
> particular house?... )
> 
> Equivalent for ALL purposes? or just for some narrowly defined purpose?
> 
> I guess that it could be argued that the subject of both representations is
> the same 'house' - but they are representations of two different
> descriptions/depictions of the same thing. IMO you shouldn't be conneg-ing
> between these at all. One might wriggle and provide a ttl representation that
> used some drawing vocabulary to describe the lines and shapes in the picture,
> adn I think given such a vocab - it would be reasonable to regard a PNG and
> such a detailed ttl account in a suitably grounded vocab - as equivalent
> representations of a depiction of... well, a house (if that's what it is).
> 
> BTW: what is it about the depiction that makes it a depiction of a house -
> quite apart from web architecture, what are the rules for examining two
> depictions/pictures and determining them to be equivalent? An if you can
> resolve that is the ttl representation an admissable equivalent under those
> rules?
> 
>> Cheers,
>>       Michael
>> 
>> -- 
>> Dr. Michael Hausenblas
>> DERI - Digital Enterprise Research Institute
>> National University of Ireland, Lower Dangan,
>> Galway, Ireland, Europe
>> Tel. +353 91 495730
>> http://sw-app.org/about.html
> 
> Regards
> 
> Stuart
> --

Received on Thursday, 12 February 2009 14:54:12 UTC