Drummond,
Can you describe the differences between "self-reference" and
"cross-reference"? XRI syntax has these two things, the
syntactical and logical differences between them aren't
clear (at least to me).
Thank you,
=Loren
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Drummond Reed [mailto:]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 4:00 PM
> To:
> Subject: [xri] Editorial change: "non-resolution" to "self-reference"
>
>
> As we continue to prepare the final working draft (now slated to be 09
> after Gabe's posting of 08 today), I'd like to put to rest a lingering
> terminology issue: the term "non-resolvable". We have found numerous
> times now that this term creates confusion because, as Gabe says, what
> we really mean when we use it to describe an XRI is
> "not-to-be-resolved".
>
> In other words, "non-resolvable" DOESN'T mean the XRI CAN'T
> be resolved,
> it simply means in this context that the purpose of the XRI is only to
> determine equivalence and thus it should not be dereferenced.
>
> Examples:
>
> xri:@foo
> xri:(@foo)
>
> The former is intended to be resolved to the resource identified by
> "@foo". The latter is a way of expressing that resolution is NOT
> intended, and that the XRI merely expresses "the identifier with the
> value '@foo'".
>
> We have never disagreed that this is useful, we just haven't known
> exactly what to call it. As we have written many times (and as David
> Booth illustrated in his white paper about the different uses of URIs
> that we cited in the XRI Requirements doc), what we intend by the term
> "non-resolution" is same thing accomplished in English language by
> putting a word in quotes, e.g., "the word "user-friendly" has become
> commonplace in computer literature".
>
> It finally hit me what this really is: a self-reference.
> Since the whole
> purpose of an identifier is to serve as a reference to a resource, we
> need special syntax - in both human and computer languages - for the
> special case when we DON'T mean "the thing being identified", but
> instead mean "the identifier itself", i.e., a self-reference.
>
> I've already begun using this term in several documents
> describing this
> feature of XRIs and it works like a charm - simply substitute
> "self-reference" for "non-resolvability" and "self-referential" for
> "non-resolvable". It works especially well because cross-reference
> syntax is already a key feature of XRIs, and now we can list
> self-reference syntax alongside it.
>
> So the formal proposal is to make the terminology substitution above
> beginning with the 09 draft. Any objections, please post ASAP
> - silence
> will be deemed consensus.
>
> =Drummond
>
>
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