Re: URI versus URI Reference

Michael Mealling wrote:

> On Wed, May 24, 2000 at 07:19:41PM -0400, Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
> >
> > >> >  One would expect a URI reference to be
> > >> > a pointer to a URI, i.e., a doubly indirect specification of a
> > >> > resource, and not some generalization or specialization of a URI.
> >
> >
> > One would, but one would be wrong. I think the term came around from
> > some thought such as "a reference using a URI" or something...
> > I was not very involved in the haggles about terms. It is difficult to
> > be close to English usage at the end of a lot of specification
> > discussions.
>
> Being tangentially involved in that discussion, the term came
> from the fact that, at the time, the only place that used
> those additional semantics of relative URIs and fragments was found
> in hypertext references inside documents (i.e. places where a base
> was defined and there were identified document fragments).

If I understand what you and Tim are saying, that confirms my hypothesis that
``URI'' and ``URI reference '' mean essentially the same thing.   That is, ``a
reference using a URI'' is close to if not identical with ``a reference having the
form of a URI''.
And ``reference'' means ``a place in a document where a URI is used as a hypertext
reference''.

Paul Abrahams