Re: Injective Quality (Was: Re: URIs quack like a duck)

From: Jonathan Borden <jborden@mediaone.net>
Date: Wednesday, May 31, 2000 1:52 PM




>Tim,
>
>if we define:
>>
>> URI equality  gives one form of sameness.  It is a low-level form.  For
>any
>> form
>> of == other than URI string comparison, you have
>>
>>    u1 = u2   =>  R1 == R2
>>
>as applying to both absolute and relative URI references (and I argue that
>since many 'absolute' URIs are in fact context dependent this isn't such an
>unreasonable definition), isn't the namespace 'problem' solved?


No - you can't define something which isn't true.  It applies to URIs.

Relative URI references are not URIs.  They are only shorthand forms for
URIs
which assume the writer and reader are both aware of the URI of the context.

When you give, in a document http://example.com/, a URI-reference "foo",
then
that means "http://example.com/foo" and nothing else can be discussed except
about "http://example.com/foo".

It isn't as though relative URI refernces are being invented here. We can't
here define their properties.

Of course within a single document, folks who have been using "foo" and
"bar"
might find they can go on doing that as the fact that http://example.com/foo
and http://example.com/bar were implied doesn't affect their processing.
But still remember that "./foo" and "foo" mean the same thing.

However, you can not define "foo" as meaning the same thing in
the contexts of http://example.com/ and http://example.org/ .
These are clearly different.

Tim

>Jonathan
>
>

Received on Thursday, 1 June 2000 16:57:51 UTC