# Re: Seattle minutes

Michael Mealling (ccoprmm@oit.gatech.edu)
Tue, 5 Apr 94 12:04:12 EDT

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    From: ccoprmm@oit.gatech.edu (Michael Mealling)

    Message-Id: <199404051604.AA27434@oit.gatech.edu>

    Subject: Re: Seattle minutes

    To: moore@cs.utk.edu (Keith Moore)

    Date: Tue, 5 Apr 94 12:04:12 EDT

    In-Reply-To: <199404042312.TAA23395@wilma.cs.utk.edu>; from "Keith Moore" at Apr 4, 94 7:12 pm

Keith Moore said this:
> > > o Larry Masinter remarked that the group had this problem with URLs
> > > and URNs because we didn't understand enough about what they
> > > were, and we ended up changing the title of ach of those. He
> > > suggested that we're putting the cart ahead of the horse.
> >
> > I disagree. I know exactly what they will do and what they will be used
> > for. When I picked a name so much flamage happens over "Oh No! Not another
> > acronym!" that I decided that the name was secondary. I new what I
> > wanted it to do and I can explain it. I personally like Characteristic but
> > if you wanna call it a Uniform Resource Elephant then that will work too.
> > ;-)
>
> The important word here is "I". YOU may think you know exactly what
> they will do, but the output of this group (if it is to have any)
> must be an AGREEMENT on what they will do. We don't currently have
> such agreement, and as far as I can tell, we don't even have a shared
> UNDERSTANDING of where we disagree (though we are getting closer).

Good point. Should I write everything down that I think URIs should be?
It actually makes good sense when you look at it all together...
I wrote the requirments such that you could encode everything that
everyone wants to encode (libraries:MARC records;CS folx:document
structure and format;users: cost and size;accountants:audit trails;
law enforcement:accountability, etc). Now that I think about it it
actually make sense that we worked out URLs and URNs the way we did
before we came up with a set of functional requirements.

> The problem with the name is that people are using the word URC
> as if they know what it means. But the person who says URC may
> mean something different than the person who hears it.
>
> There's a chicken-and-egg problem here. We need to agree on vocabulary
> before we can discuss the proper function of each piece of the system, but
> it's impossible to define what a URC is without specifying its function.

Definitly! I just decided to try and build a little bit of chicken so
I could start talking about the egg (did that make sense? ;-)

> > > o Keith Moore didn't think you can lump all these things into a
> > > single structure and make it have any meaning. It is non-optimal
> > > at best, and won't work at worst.
> >
> > I disagree. If this group specifies these elements to have meaning then
> > they will. It really depends on how tightly the member elements are
> > controlled. I like using X- for experimental and have the URI group
> > specify "Official" ones such as "Format","Author","Size", etc.
>
> You can lump them in to a single abstract structure if you like, but if the
> elements of the structure are maintained in different places and have
> different requirements for consistency, it may be misleading to talk about
> them as if they were in a common data structure.

I don't really think of them as a common data structure with common
attributes but more as a method for illustrating how several wholly different
entities relate to each other in a way that is as basic as comma delimited
ascii.

-MM

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