Costello, Roger L. wrote:
> Peter Hunsberger wrote:
>
>
>>So, first you need to decide what the real
>>fundamentals of your information space are:
>>HTTP, URIs, HTML, XML, etc.
>
>
> My interest is at a higher level. I would like to abstract away from
> specific "formats", and understand the general mechanisms/patterns that
> have emerged on the Web for formulating and delivering "information".
>
Roger--
I think you'll find that most people who think about the Web at this
level (including Tim Berners-Lee) think that URIs are fundamental,
whatever they may think about the other stuff. If you want to abstract
away from URIs as a specific format, you can say that a common way of
identifying and referring to specific things is necessary if you're
going to create a "world wide web". Without a generally-used way of
linkiing information together, it's hard to create a "web". Instead,
you tend to get little islands of information. Sure, you could create
an alternative way of doing that, but it would tend to break what's
already there.
--Frank
