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RE: Re: [namespaceDocument-8] 14 Theses

• To: "'Patrick Stickler'" <patrick.stickler@n...>, ext Dare Obasanjo <dareo@m...>, XML DEV <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: Re: [namespaceDocument-8] 14 Theses
• From: Michael Brennan <Michael_Brennan@A...>
• Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 13:11:21 -0800

> From: Patrick Stickler [mailto:patrick.stickler@n...]

<snip/>

> (d) Do we have to use http: URLs as namespace URIs to make it work?
> 
> Until DDDS and SW technologies mature a bit more, probably yes, in
> most contexts.

Actually, I would think that RDDL will work fine for any URL that can be
shared and can be resolved to a reference to a document. ftp:, for instance,
would work just as well as http:.

This is a minor point, but it points to a more important point. The biggest
fly in the ointment, here, is the common use of "http:" URIs that don't
point to anything. I personally consider that to be very bad practice. I
don't think we can achieve consensus unless we agree that abusing
well-defined URI schemes for abstract URIs is a bad practice. If it's
abstract and does not point to anything, use a URN.

I strongly agree with a message Rick Jelliffe posted [1] in a thread on
XPointer. In particular:

    The WWW has succeeded not because URIs give us the ability
    to abstractly identify any resource (which is not a bad thing) but
because
    the resources could be downloaded.  The bits before the ":"  are
    the key to the success of URLs, not the bits after.

Let's not ruin those things that have made the web successful as we chase
after the semantic web.

[1] http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200202/msg00112.html

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