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Re: Why is xml:base a URI *reference*?

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: Why is xml:base a URI *reference*?
• From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
• Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 13:20:31 -0500
• In-reply-to: <6B1B5544-4204-11D8-BEB7-000A95A51C9E@t...>

tbray@t... (Tim Bray) writes:
>On Jan 8, 2004, at 4:06 AM, John Cowan wrote:
>> A fragment identifier attached to a URI that points to an XML
>> document has no defined meaning
>
>Actually, what you mean is, if something is */xml then the fragids have 
>no meaning.  If the XML document is SVG, or XHTML, or RDF, or ... well 
>just about any other XML format in widespread use, then the fragid does 
>indeed have a well-understood meaning. -Tim

Well, no.  URIs don't "point to... documents".   They identify
resources.  Spend enough time in the URI Zen Zone, and the implications
of this will stagger and likely frustrate you.

If you just have the URI, you have no idea at all what the fragment
identifier means, and you can't know until you actually do a retrieval
(even if you just gather metadata) to find out what the MIME type of the
stuff you're getting back is.

Even then you may not know, because of the wonders of
content-negotiation - there's no guaranteed connection between the
resource identified by the URI and the representation.  That means MIME
types remain unpredictable until you actually get something.

This is all old ground, of course:
http://www.advogato.org/person/simonstl/diary.html?start=38
http://www.advogato.org/person/simonstl/diary.html?start=35

You're right that */xml doesn't define rules for fragment identifiers,
but given the non-adoption of XPointer and its own URI clunkiness, I'd
count that as a feature and not a bug.

• References:
  • Re: Why is xml:base a URI *reference*?
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>

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