- From: Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:01:21 -0500
- To: Xiaoshu Wang <xiao@renci.org>
- Cc: Richard Cyganiak <richard@cyganiak.de>, "Roy T. Fielding" <fielding@gbiv.com>, Jonathan Rees <jar@creativecommons.org>, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>, HTTP Working Group <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>, www-tag@w3.org
On Jul 14, 2009, at 9:01 AM, Xiaoshu Wang wrote: > Pat Hayes wrote: > > <snip> >>> on these two counts, you end up ranting against a POV that I do >>> not hold. >>> >>> I especially continue to maintain that any talk about denotation >>> is out of place on the HTTP protocol level. There is no such thing >>> as denotation in the universe of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. >>> Yes, people obviously use HTTP URIs to denote all sorts of things, >>> and a lot can be said about how one should model resources and >>> representations based on the things one wants to denote, and what >>> one can or cannot infer about the denotation of a URI based on >>> HTTP interactions, but none of this matters one bit for the actual >>> operations of the protocol. >> >> Seems to me that this may have been true before http-range-14, but >> it is not a stance that can possibly be maintained in the face of >> that decision. And your final sentence above is, surely you can >> yourself see, tendentious. If the HTTP 'layer' really were >> completely unconcerned with denotation, how could one *possibly* >> infer anything about what a URI denotes from *anything* about HTTP >> interactions? > The assumption here is that httpRange-14 is the right direction. > But that is a big *if*. If anything, this debate only shows how > *bad* that this whole idea of httpRange-14 and information resource > thing is. As I said in another post, I think http-range-14 is terrible, but all the alternatives are worse. >>> The protocol is just about pushing representations around. >> >> Well, I would be delighted if this were true. But then the HTTP >> specs should not claim or even hint at the idea that URIs can >> "identify" non-computational things, or that such things can have >> "representations" in its specialized sense. (It would be very good >> manners, in fact, to clarify just what that highly specialized >> sense of "representation" is, and state explicitly that it is not >> intended to cover any wider sense of representation, for example >> the sense in which it it used in such phrases as "knowledge >> representation".) And you should be quite open and clear about the >> fact that this view of HTTP is not compatible with the http- >> range-14 decision. > The HTTP protocol should be about pushing representation around. > And it shouldn't careless about if its URI denotes or identifies > anything. The latter is up to the one who implements that > particular URI. Let's not ignore the existence of such entities > because it is those who expressed their denotation semantics. > > Also, let's us not play linguistic tricks. If the owner of "http://example.com/a.hamburger > " makes it to denote a hamburger. Then HTTP-GET "http://example.com/a.hamburger > " means "get me an awww:representation" of the hamburger. But it > does NOT mean the "get" like in "get me that hamburger" as what we > would say in front of a grill. Of course not. But it also does not mean, "get me an awww:representation" of the hamburger. Or at least, it had better not mean that, since hamburgers don't have awww:representations. Web pages about hamburgers can represent (not awww:represent) a hamburger, and they of course have awww:representations. But an awww:repreresentation of a representation of X is not an awww:representation of X. > To think otherwise is to hallucinate. Quite. > > httpRange-14 was at first designed to prevent people from episodes > of this kind of hallucination. But at the end, it ends up with its > own one -- the hallucination of the information resource. I don't like the terminology (and I don't think we need it, and especially do not need to be debating its exact meaning), but the general idea is clear enough: its the thing that HTTP returns the awww:representation of. That is certainly not a hallucination, because you just made HTTP contact with it. Pat > > But let's get real. Let's not temper the HTTP semantics with our > own view on what the world or the Web ought to be. Sure, you (or > y'all) can have your wonderful world of "information resources". It > is none of my business. But -- PLEASE, don't push it upon me. I am > just not sophisticated enough to appreciate that delicate wonder. > And most of all, I don't care. > > Xiaoshu > > ------------------------------------------------------------ IHMC (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office Pensacola (850)202 4440 fax FL 32502 (850)291 0667 mobile phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes
Received on Tuesday, 14 July 2009 15:02:48 UTC