Date: Thu, 6 Oct 1994 08:50:51 +0100 (BST)
From: "Jon P. Knight" <J.P.Knight@lut.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Why URN is a subset of URL
To: "Roy T. Fielding" <fielding@avron.ICS.UCI.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <9410052117.aa04944@paris.ics.uci.edu>
Message-Id: <Pine.3.05.9410060850.A8508-b100000@suna>
On Wed, 5 Oct 1994, Roy T. Fielding wrote:
> Peter Deutsch wrote:
> > Still, the point is that at its heart, a URN is not
> > intended to allow access but location independent naming.
> > Just as ISBNs and library call numbers are different
> > things and serve different purposes, I submit that URNs
> > and URLs are different things and will serve different
> > purposes.
>
> That is an implementation detail.
Hmm, I'm not so sure. I think that the fact that URLs and URNs may have
similar syntax _is_ an implementation detail, but the semantics are
_defined_ to be different and its the semantics that are really the
important thing (I think its also what Peter was probably getting at).
URLs are resource _locators_; URNs are _location_ independent names. How
something which is location independent can be a member of a subset of a
set of locators is a little beyond me at the moment.
Jon
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jon Knight, Research Student in High Performance Networking and Distributed
Systems in the Department of _Computer_Studies_ at Loughborough University.
* It's not how big your share is, its how much you share that's important *