RE: A Priori Information (Was Snapshot of Web Services Glossary )

Note that he is using the word "prior", rather than "a priori" -- which
has a specialized meaning that I think is just not what we are looking
for in these discussions.

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Baker [mailto:distobj@acm.org] 
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 9:40 AM
To: David Orchard
Cc: www-ws-arch@w3.org
Subject: Re: A Priori Information (Was Snapshot of Web Services Glossary
)



On Wed, Feb 26, 2003 at 09:58:47PM -0800, David Orchard wrote:
> My big problem so far, and I haven't been able to wade through all the

> emails to figure it out, is that I can't figure out what knowledge is 
> allowed to be in scope for non a priori.  For example, GETting a web 
> page requires a knowledge of HTTP, TCP/IP, URIs.  So is it knowledge 
> of the format of the representation?  Ah, but if I'm a browser, I 
> certainly have to "know" what HTML, JPEG, GIF, etc. are in order to 
> render them properly.
> 
> My guess is that any discussion around a priori has to focus on what 
> knowledge classifies as a priori, and what doesn't.

I'd say that it's *all* knowledge, of any kind.

So with respect to your browser example, yes, prior knowledge of all
those things is required (except for perhaps JPEG and GIF which could be
considered optional in light of the alt tag).

MB
-- 
Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca
Web architecture consulting, technical reports, evaluation & analysis

Received on Thursday, 27 February 2003 11:55:52 UTC