RE: [xri] What is this XRD is for?

[Eran Hammer-Lahav <eran@hueniverse.com>]

The spec says:

 

XRD --(about)--> Subject <--(describes)-- Alias

 

If someone want to take that to mean:

 

XRD--(about)-->Alias

 

That’s allowed, but not required. There are cases (such as the examples I gave) where this will produce bad descriptors but where an Alias is still useful. If you just think about identity, this is easy and yes, Alias and Subject end up being both described by the XRD. But in the overlap between web documents and identity, or other places where one URI is resolved in more than one way, this doesn’t always fly (because the world will never agree on what resource/representation/etc really means).

 

My proposal is to leave things be.

 

EHL

 

From: drummond.reed@gmail.com [mailto:drummond.reed@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Drummond Reed
Sent: Thursday, February 04, 2010 10:54 PM
To: Eran Hammer-Lahav
Cc: cantor.2@osu.edu; Breno de Medeiros; xri@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [xri] What is this XRD is for?

 

 

On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 10:52 PM, Eran Hammer-Lahav <eran@hueniverse.com> wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Scott Cantor [mailto:cantor.2@osu.edu]

> Sent: Thursday, February 04, 2010 5:22 PM
> To: Eran Hammer-Lahav; 'Breno de Medeiros'; xri@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: RE: [xri] What is this XRD is for?
>
> > Eran Hammer-Lahav wrote on 2010-02-04:

> >> Can both denote the same resource but one uses HTTP and the other
> ACCT.
> >> If an XRD has the HTTP in the subject, that's all the XRD is about.
> >> If that XRD also has the ACCT one in an alias, all it means is that
> >> the resource identified by the subject can also be identified by the
> >> alias, but it does not mean that the properties and links associated
> >> with the HTTP-identified resource apply to the ACCT-identified resource.
>

> To clarify my complaint here, I'm understanding you to be saying these things
> (assuming there's a <Subject>):
>
> - The content of the XRD is about a resource identified by the <Subject> URI.
> - Any <Alias> URIs identify the same resource as the <Subject> URI.

> - The content of the XRD is NOT about the resource identified by any <Alias>
> URIs

Didn't say it is NOT, just that this is not a foregone conclusion. The XRD might be about the Aliases too, but that is *application* specific (where the rat hole of resource vs representation lives).

EHL

Well, if there's one thing I vehementaly agree on, it's that I don't want to down that rathole either. I've been bitten by those rats too many times ;-)

=Drummond