Re: RDF namespace conventions

At 09:16 AM 5/21/00 -0400, Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
>>You are not prohibited from doing it, but you are `prohibited' from
>>using dereferencing to schema as use cases for changing the spec.
>>That is, you should firstly consider the use cases that _are_ a goal.
>
>
>I'm sorry, but if the spec (and attendant expert interpretation)
>disallows dereferncing of the URI, then prohibting chnaging the spec
>on those grounds effectively prohibits dereferencing URIs.
>(was this an accident or a slick process play by an anti-URI group?)
>
>What do we do with the use cases which are prohibited, I wonder.

I don't think most of the proposals I've seen recently (my own status quo
for instance) _prohibit_ this behavior by layers _above_ the namespace
processor itself.

If RDF wants to dereference a URI in a layer above the namespace processor,
I don't think anyone will have any problem with that.  On the other hand, I
think people will be thoroughly irritated to be told that Namespaces URIs
necessarily should point to anything.

I think you're going well past the main flow of the conversation by
suggesting that 'prohibition' is on the table. Such a situation might
appear were the Namespaces Rec officially reopened and the discussion
turned to whether relative URLs or even URLs should be outright banned, but
I don't see that here.

The needs of the top layer don't necessarily determine the needs of a lower
layer.

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 Sunday, 21 May 2000 10:46:44 UTC