Re: What is at the end of the namespace?

On Wed, 7 Nov 2001, Sean B. Palmer wrote:

> Hi Patrick,
> 
> I would suggest that perhaps uri@w3.org would be an even more
> appropriate forum for this debate? Whatever the case, I'll send this
> to www-talk, BCC'ing uri, and you can decide where to follow-up to.
> 
> > To define e.g. an 'http:' URL which is never intended to
> > resolve to anything is IMO contrary to the defined
> > semantics for such URLs and thus bad practice.
> 
> No; you are implying that there is a default base of semantics for
> HTTP identifiers, that they are intended to resolve to a set of
> documents, or somesuch. HTTP makes no such assumption;

If the http URI is defined by RFC 2616 (as indicated by section 2.1.1 of
http://www.w3.org/TR/uri-clarification/), then section 3.2.2 of the RFC
seems pretty clear

--- cut ---
3.2.2 http URL

   The "http" scheme is used to locate network resources via the HTTP
   protocol. This section defines the scheme-specific syntax and
   semantics for http URLs.

   http_URL = "http:" "//" host [ ":" port ] [ abs_path [ "?" query ]]

   If the port is empty or not given, port 80 is assumed. The semantics
   are that the identified resource is located at the server listening
   for TCP connections on that port of that host, and the Request-URI
   for the resource is abs_path (section 5.1.2). 
--- cut ---

I.e. there are some defined semantics that http URIs resolve to something
located on a server?  Is the RFC wrong, or am I mis-interpretting it?

Having said that, I accept that current http URI usage goes well beyond
this, i.e. people are assigning http URIs to all sort of things, and that
we've probably got past the stage where it is worth having the argument.

A question...

If I make an RDF statement about
http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#, am I making a statement about
a conceptual namespace, or about the RDFS resource that is at that URI?
In either case, how do I make a statement about the other one?

Andy
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Received on Tuesday, 13 November 2001 18:49:34 UTC