Re: Middle ground change proposal for httpRange-14 -- submission

Hi Kingsley,

On Tue, 2012-03-27 at 07:27 -0400, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
> On 3/26/12 2:37 PM, David Booth wrote:
[ . . . ]
> >> @prefix wdrs:<http://www.w3.org/2007/05/powder-s#>  .
> >> <http://example/toucan>  wdrs:describedby<http://example/toucan>  .
> > To my mind, wdrs:describedby means something different, as I think it is
> > important to be able to distinguish between a URI definition and other
> > data that involves the target URI.  Here's how I explained it in the
> > proposal:
> > http://www.w3.org/wiki/UriDefinitionDiscoveryProtocol#3.2.2_Link_header
[ . . . ]

> Putting the wdrs: namespace aside for a second, why is "definedby" a 
> better predicate than "describedby" when the semantics in question boils 
> down to indicating that a resource (a document) is a descriptor (bearer 
> of description representation) for the referent of a hashless HTTP URI ?

Well, not "better", but *different*.  Yes, they both indicate that the
document describes the resource, but "definedby" states that the
document is definitional, as opposed to just containing additional
information about the target resource.  The difference boils down to the
question: 

  According to the URI owner, what assertions should *always* be
  assumed, when the target URI is used in a statement?  

The "definedby" relation indicates that, according to the URI owner, the
statements in the document should always be assumed, when using the URI.
The "describedby" relation merely indicates that the URI owner thinks
the statements may be useful to someone.



-- 
David Booth, Ph.D.
http://dbooth.org/

Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of his employer.

Received on Tuesday, 27 March 2012 14:22:26 UTC