[topicmapmail] Meaning of URIs - ongoing debate on new W3C forum

[Murray Altheim]

Lars Marius Garshol wrote:
> * Murray Altheim
> | 
> | * I use "entity" to refer to the W3C's home page (as a "home page"),
> |    and "resource" to refer to that home page as an XHTML/HTML document.
> 
> Note that your usage of "resource" here is precisely the opposite of
> the RFC 2396/RDF one. They use it to mean the same as TM "subject".
> The current data model draft works around this by using "information
> resource" for what you call "resource".

Having a background in SGML, I tend to think of entities. Resources
are things you dig out of the ground, or cut down in forests, or
lay off during tough times.

I don't tend to use the same language as RDF, a thing I noted the very
first time I read the very first RDF syntax draft. And I don't think
"information resource" really helps the matter much, given that a
common definition of "information" is "data that obtains a change of
state in the receiver". In any case, adding "information" to the mix
is a bit like adding "semantic" or "knowledge" to any phrase: it just
muddles things further, like marketing-speak.

Murray

......................................................................
Murray Altheim                    http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK               .

   The world, Bush said, is now riven by "the clearest of divides:
   between those who seek order and those who spread chaos; between
   those who work for peaceful change and those who adopt the methods
   of gangsters; between those who honor the rights of man and those
   who deliberately take the lives of men and women and children
   without mercy or shame. Between these alternatives there is no
   neutral ground."
   http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/09/24/MN298975.DTL

   Actions speak louder than words, and I think it's pretty clear
   which side of the divide Bush is on.