Re: [xml-dev] XML vocabulary for expressing constraints?

[Steve Newcomb <srn@coolheads.com>]

On 12/13/2013 11:28 AM, Rushforth, Peter wrote:
> The only thing we can say about the semantics of the identified resource is what we see in the content of the a tag.  The rel/rev attribute value is the machine readable token that programmers understand/rely on, the text is what human consumers are meant to understand.
> 
> "A resource is a conceptual mapping to a set of entities, not the entity that corresponds to the mapping at any particular point in time."
> 
> http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm#sec_5_2_1_1

Roy Fielding's insights were brilliant and prophetic.  But I don't see
how these verses of scripture help us to know what any specific entity
is, or even what *any* entity is.  How is what Fielding said about
representational state transfer at odds with what I said about the
transmission of byte streams from servers?  Human consumers may be
*meant* to understand something, but what?

> 
> On the web, there is no attempt to capture the entity that is the social contract you're referring to, only the mapping to something the author of the link considers to be the the appropriate mapping.    The Web allows and encourages this: we're each an authority on reality.
> 

You just expressed a baseless assumption to which I'd like to draw your
attention.  How is "the appropriate mapping" selected by the author, and
why?  No matter how you answer that question, something won't add up.
Unless, of course, the author and the recipient already share --
accurately -- the universe(s) of discourse the author is accurately
employing.

I disagree with "The Web allows...[us each to be] ... an authority on
reality."  Unless, of course, it's true that everybody on the Web lives
in the same universe of discourse.  Personally, I doubt that's true.  In
fact, I'd call it a baseless, albeit seductive, assumption.  One can
speak on the Web, but will one's speech be understood?

Here are two snippets of older scripture I believe to be relevant:

"The man [Adam] gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the
sky, and to every beast of the field,..." (Genesis 2:20)

...[but later on]...

"...the LORD confused the language of the whole world.""  (Genesis 11:20)

> Reality is a bit fluid after all.  Take a wooden box. If you turn it upside down it might be a good stool.  So which is it?

What the box "is", for me, depends on what I think it is, i.e., how I
see it.  Let's imagine, for a moment, that I have successfully referred
to the box precisely and unambiguously.  If my reference is ambiguous as
to whether it's a container or a stool, then that ambiguous view of the
box is precisely the semantic I'm invoking.  Q.E.D.

> Yes, but the web makes it easy to convey our point of view.

In some extremely important respects, things are better than ever, I
agree.  I think the story isn't over, though.