Re: Push back on the resource/representation introduction in HTTPbis?

On Nov 5, 2013, at 4:51 PM, Pat Hayes wrote:

>> What I'm trying to do (with some welcome help from Jonathan Rees) in
>> this rewrite is to avoid the problems we have noted with some aspects
>> of the existing language, while keeping the goal of providing a
>> helpful, but not overly complicated, introduction to the motivating
>> background for the HTTP protocol, while never-the-less providing the
>> necessary technically precise definitions of key terms used throughout
>> the specs.
> 
> This passage suffers from a familiar kind of schizophrenia about what 'resource' means.

The word 'resource' doesn't occur in that paragraph ... right?
> 
> FWIW, the history of things on the Web being called "resources" (rather than "things", say) is directly traceable back to the pre-Web writings of Doug Engelbart, who first used the term in this kind of a context. And what Doug meant the word to mean, quite obviously from his writings, was the limited sense of things that you can actually observe and interact with using computable protocols. He called them "resources" precisely because that is what they are: you can access them and use them on a network; they provide functionality. He did not mean the term to include anything and everything that can be referred to or thought about. This particular metaphysical train wreck was introduced later, as far as I can tell by Tim Berners-Lee and Larry Masinter when they decided to conflate URL with URN, and thereby fatally muddled reference (done by names) with access (done by locators). It is now too late to undo all this disastrous harm, but at least we can strive to limit the damage by speaking more carefully.

How would you say that what Henry wrote about resources differs from the way Engelbart used the word? Compare:

"the whole range of content and services which a server may provide"
to
"you can access them and use them on a network; they provide functionality" [your words, I couldn't find Engelbart's]

These sound pretty much the same to me.

The word "identify" doesn't occur and "refer" is only applied, in a completely colloquial and inessential way, to the single word "resource" (the word "resource" refers ...) and not to URIs (nothing says that URIs either "identify" or "refer"). This is intentional.

The only way I can make sense of what you've written, is as a repeat of your entirely sensible critique of the published specs, not on what Henry wrote. That critique is part of the ancestry of this bit of text. I read Henry's text as trying to put some sense back into 2616bis, which has been wandering off into the dark side as you describe. As far as I can tell you and he agree.

Jonathan

Received on Tuesday, 5 November 2013 22:22:39 UTC