Re: Generic processing of Fragment IDs in RFC 3023bis

On 2010/10/06 21:54, Jonathan Rees wrote:

> Suppose we have an application that can display XML elements, or do
> some other processing on them. It is given a URI (or more precisely an
> absolute URI reference with a fragment id). It has a choice of either
> of two APIs or libraries to use to determine an element designated or
> "identified" by the URI. Library 1 selects elements according to XML
> generic fragid processing, while library 2 is an RDF processor that is
> capable of inferring, based on available axioms, that the URI
> "identifies" an XML element and, in fact, some particular element
> whose properties (its attributes and so on) are known.
>
> Depending on which URI-derefencing library the application chooses to
> use, the application will get either of two different elements for the
> same URI - even if none of the information involved in the
> determinations is stale.

Given that XML fragment identifiers are pretty well established these 
days, it would in my opinion be a rather strange failure on the RDF side 
to create an RDF-based vocabulary to identify XML elements (and other 
syntactic constructs) where the same fragment id identifies different 
XML elements.


> Without considering the question of which library the application
> "should" use, it appears that you are saying three things: first, that
> this is a perfectly natural state of affairs, so it has to be accepted
> because it's the way the world works;

I'd say that the RDF side should be fixed.

> second, that the cat is out of
> the bag and we couldn't change things even if we wanted to;

Is there already such an RDF library?

> and third,
> that the practice of having multiple interpretations is valuable and
> we shouldn't change it even if we could.

For many reasons, it may be a bad idea to change things that work. I 
don't know about Roy, but I sure wouldn't go as far as 'valuable'.


> Many people would consider coherent reference across protocols or
> interpretation contexts a meaningless and misguided goal, while others
> consider it the heart of web architecture.

My position would be that it may not always be possible, but that it is 
certainly a meaningful and worthwhile goal.

Regards,    Martin.

-- 
#-# Martin J. Dürst, Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-# http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp   mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp

Received on Thursday, 7 October 2010 07:45:38 UTC