Re: Modularity (was: Linkbases,Topic Maps,and RDF Knowledge Bases -- help me understand, please)

[John Cowan <cowan@mercury.ccil.org>]

Stephen R. Newcomb scripsit:

> > > For example, in XLink <URL:
> > > http://www.foo.com/doc.xml#bar > and <URL:
> > > http://www.foo.com/doc.xml#xpointer(id('bar'))
> > > mean the same thing, but in RDF they're different.
> >
> > I really wish that, on the Web and everywhere else,
> > addressing (e.g., URIs) were entirely functionally
> > distinct from the many applications of addressing
> > (e.g. XLink and RDF).

Well, but remember the price of making these the same
in XLink.  XLink systems can't answer a simple
question like "Do you and I link to the same resource?"
We might, but if we specify it using distinct names,
as above, we aren't going to know except by trying.
In RDF, the answer is simple to find and does not
require actually fetching the resource.

-- 
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
	--Douglas Hofstadter