Re: URI for abstract concepts (domain, host, origin, site, etc.)

On Jul 2, 2009, at 11:49 AM, Eran Hammer-Lahav wrote:

> But this approach means a parser cannot figure out the meaning of a  
> URI without a GET. How would a parser know that a document about  
> such a URI is really about something else (the subject of the URI)  
> and not the resource the URI itself is identifying?
>

Why would a *parser* need to know such a thing? A reasoner could know  
this by having access to some sentences that told it what the URI  
refers to. I don't know of any other general way that any entity,  
including a human being, could know what a URI was intended to denote.

> For this to work, I need to hardcode http://t-d-b.org into every  
> parser to have a specialized meaning.

No, you just have to know that it indicates that the URI refers to  
*something*. Since URIs can (be used to) refer to anything, it isnt  
possible to have a "specialized" meaning.

Pat

>
> EHL
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: David Booth [mailto:david@dbooth.org]
>> Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 7:08 AM
>> To: Larry Masinter
>> Cc: 'Jonathan Rees'; ashok.malhotra@oracle.com; Eran Hammer-Lahav;
>> apps-discuss@ietf.org; www-tag@w3.org; 'URI'
>> Subject: RE: URI for abstract concepts (domain, host, origin, site,
>> etc.)
>>
>> Larry,
>>
>> On Sun, 2009-06-28 at 10:53 -0700, Larry Masinter wrote:
>>> I'm thinking about revising
>>> http://larry.masinter.net/duri.html
>>>
>>> to:
>>> (1) to get rid of "duri" and just stick with "tdb"
>>>  (because there isn't much use for duri at all)
>>> (2) make it a URI scheme rather than a URN namespace
>>> (3) make the date optional, for cases where the time of
>>>  binding resource to representation (and of interpretation
>>>  of that representation to an 'abstract concept')
>>>
>>> So the simplest form would be
>>>
>>> tdb:http://larry.masinter.net
>>
>> That makes it remarkably similar to
>> http://t-d-b.org?http://larry.masinter.net
>>
>> but the t-d-b.org URI has the advantage that it doesn't require a new
>> URI scheme, and it *might* be dereferenceable by a browser.  In fact,
>> at
>> the moment it *is* dereferenceable.
>>
>>>
>>> which would neatly allow using descriptions of
>>> abstract concepts to identify the abstract concept.
>>
>> That sounds like what the "http://t-d-b.org?" prefix does.
>>
>>> (Syntactically, the date can be left out without
>>> ambiguity.)
>>>
>>> Would this be helpful, at least for illustrative purposes?
>>
>> I think the goal is reasonable, but as explained in
>> http://dbooth.org/2006/urn2http/
>> I don't think a new URI scheme is necessary to achieve it.  Similar
>> things can be done with http URIs, with greater benefit.
>>
>>>
>>> I think there are other means for distinguishing
>>> between the representation of a  description and
>>> the thing described, but this would at least
>>> add a well-known method that isn't tied to
>>> any particular protocol, linking method, resolution
>>> method, etc.
>>
>> Right, but "http:" URIs do not necessarily need to be resolved using
>> HTTP, nor do they necessarily need to be resolved at all.  At worst
>> they
>> can be treated as opaque strings, but at best they *might* be
>> dereferenceable to useful information.  A URI prefix like
>> "http://t-d-b.org?" can become "well known" just as "tdb:" can.  This
>> is
>> a social issue, independent of whether a new scheme is defined.
>>
>>
>> --
>> David Booth, Ph.D.
>> Cleveland Clinic (contractor)
>>
>> Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not
>> necessarily
>> reflect those of Cleveland Clinic.
>
>
>
>

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Received on Thursday, 2 July 2009 22:07:33 UTC