Re: Common Sense! Was: Re: The 'resource' identified by a namespace name URI should be the namespace

At 11:24 AM 6/6/00 -0400, Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
[John Cowan]
>>I agree that the relationship is one-one (and even onto), but I deny
>>that it amounts to identity.  Confounding the namespace with the document
>>that describes it is a map-territory error.
>
>Ah, but Al's map was the definitive map.
>
>When you own a name, you can control what it means.
>Therefore, you can write a spec which says "this spec is the definition
>and the only definoition of the namespcace X" and you can by definition
>be correct by definition.

That's still confusing the map with the territory. 

Definitive maps aren't the territory, unless of course you treat the
territory itself (and the contingency of what you _might_ find there) as
the map, and abandon formal description.

Borges would be pleased. (Was it Borges who wrote that great story about
the ever-expanding map?)


Simon St.Laurent
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
Building XML Applications
Inside XML DTDs: Scientific and Technical
Cookies / Sharing Bandwidth
http://www.simonstl.com

Received on Tuesday, 6 June 2000 12:23:20 UTC