Re: The 'resource' identified by a namespace name URI should be the namespace

On Fri, Jun 02, 2000 at 04:00:52PM -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> Michael Mealling wrote:
> > But they don't need to resolve the URI in order to be able to
> > reason about it. They just need the URI to act like a URI...
> 
> Just so.   Unfortunately, namespace names aren't URIs; they are strings
> with the syntax of URI *references*.
>  
> > Ahh.... You think that just because the R happens to be a mailbox
> > that the I can't be used as a name. That isn't true. The R here
> > is the mailbox, sure. But that doesn't mean you can't say that
> > the namespace is named by the I. Now, if some application comes along
> > and wants to try and resolve that to something it will get teh
> > equivalent of "You have to send this guy email and ask him what
> > this namespace means". Which, IMHO, is perfectly reasonable...
> 
> You keep talking about "resolution" (by which you mean "access"),
> but that isn't the issue in assigning a URI to a namespace.  Because
> a mailbox has a URI, it is possible to write metadata statements about
> the mailbox, using RDF syntax, which applications can read.  There is
> no requirement for accessing (or posting to) a URI in order to find
> out things about the resource identified by the URI.

My point exactly! So if you want to use that URI as your namespace name
then whether or not its internal scheme is about mailboxes doesn't
matter. Its a perfectly valid name for a namespace (sans the persistence
requirement). 

The issue we're getting to here is that the URI space of names, by definition,
has this injective quality that is necessary for namespace names. And thus,
if relative names were 'shunned in someway', the absolute URI would have
all of the qualities you need in a namespace name...

Maybe we're running around in circles here but I think some of these
points are important because I see some incorrect assumptions about URIs
floating about. This thread being one of them...

-MM



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Michael Mealling	|      Vote Libertarian!       | www.rwhois.net/michael
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Received on Friday, 2 June 2000 16:10:53 UTC