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RE: Generality of HTTP

• To: Miles Sabin <msabin@i...>
• Subject: RE: Generality of HTTP
• From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
• Date: 21 Jan 2002 15:56:10 -0500
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <69B15B675E99D411A4110008C786DA23020CC92A@e...>
• References: <69B15B675E99D411A4110008C786DA23020CC92A@e...>

On Mon, 2002-01-21 at 14:38, Miles Sabin wrote:
> Jonathan Borden wrote,
> > It seems to me that the benefit of HTTP is that it allows the 
> > 'owner' of the URI, which means the registrant of the DNS entry of 
> > the hostname, or owner of the IP address, either of which is the 
> > "host" part of the URI, to make some statement regarding what the 
> > URI is intended _by the owner_ to mean.
> 
> Who cares what the owner means. There's nothing to stop anyone else
> using that very same URI to mean something else. That's why URIs can't 
> on their own convey meaning. To get that you need semantic agreement 
> between the producers and the consumers of the URIs.

Sure.  But some people do want to know what the owner of the URI
thought, and whether the owner of the URI published any supporting tools
which might conceivably be handy.  In the end it's the consumer's
decision, which may or may not be influenced by agreements or the advice
of the owner.

> Note what's doing the work here: the agreement, not any form of
> administrative control over any resource on the end of the URI. If 
> enough people choose to interpret,
> 
>   http://www.markbaker.ca/2002/01/Bricks/
> 
> as "denoting the class of people who don't have a firm grip on the 
> concept of naming", then that's what it means (for them) no matter
> what Mark might think. That's not in and of itself a problem, but it 
> could be, eg. if Mark wanted to start talking to one of that group 
> about bricks.

That might be what it means for them, but their agreement may not have
any effect on what it means for me.  In fact, their agreement, if I
haven't heard of it, may be less binding for me than the owner's
intent.  Why?  Because the owner's intent is likely easily discoverable
at that URI, while their intent is somewhere else in the universe.
 
-- 
Simon St.Laurent
Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
Errors, errors, all fall down!
http://simonstl.com

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