EARL Issues/Agenda Requests etc.

If these two items could be added to the agenda, I'd be much obliged.

* EARL 1.0, versions, and namespaces.
Jim is having problems building EARL tools due to a lack of
formalization of recent EARL developments. Since I have issued a
number of EARL test schemata using W3C namespaces, I blame myself for
much of the mess. The chicken/egg problem of implementing vs.
standardizing is not going to go away, so it needs to be addressed. We
discussed this briefly on IRC:-

[[[
18:18:01 <JibberJim> For my EARL DB, should I accept only
http://www.w3.org/2001/03/earl/1.00# for the earl namespace, or are
others compatible enough that I should include them?
18:18:42 <sbp> "http://www.w3.org/2001/03/earl/1.00#" is not a
namespace that is at this moment mandated by WAI ER
18:18:55 <JibberJim> * JibberJim wonders where he got it from!
18:19:01 <JibberJim> What do you suggest me using?
18:19:06 <sbp> * sbp coughs, and looks away
18:19:10 <sbp> 0.95
18:19:13 <JibberJim> No!
18:19:29 <JibberJim> There's too many differences between 0.95 and the
1.0 proposals.
18:19:40 <sbp> well, you can use http://www.w3.org/2001/03/earl/1.0#
of course, there's nothing to stop you doing so
18:19:54 <sbp> as long as you recognize the fact that whatever you do
will be purely experimental
18:20:04 <JibberJim> * JibberJim goes to see what Nick's using...
18:20:25 <sbp> i.e. if the group decides that something should be
implemented differently, and it borks your tool, then don't say I
didn't warn you...
18:20:51 <sbp> of course, I've started using the namespace too (which
is where you picked it up from)
18:20:52 <JibberJim> well Nick's using
http://www.w3.org/2001/03/earl/1.0-test# so I need to at least accept
that.
18:21:16 <sbp> perhaps we could publish a datestamped version of my
test schema?
18:21:19 <sbp> would that help?
18:21:51 <JibberJim> Well 0.95 and 1.0 are pretty different - I
certainly don't want to create any more 0.95 stuff, so want to use
some sort of 1.0
18:21:58 <sbp> I mean, version numbers are a bit silly anyway. We have
so many damn versions, and no version numbers. I'm sick of waiting for
1.0 to come around
18:22:08 <sbp> indeed
18:22:19 <JibberJim> * JibberJim thinks that's an agenda item for the
next meeting - agree 1.0
18:22:26 <sbp> agreed
18:22:36 <JibberJim> * JibberJim thinks we'd just go along with what
some bloke called Sean says.
18:22:50 <sbp> well, you can't listen to me. That's the problem
18:23:01 <JibberJim> Hard luck, we do!
18:23:02 <sbp> if I say something, you have to disregard it, since I'm
biased in many ways :-)
18:23:12 <sbp> no, don't listen! :-)
18:23:27 <chaals> * chaals thinks we should have started with version
0.1 instead of 0.9, but isn't fussed - there are a lot of numbers
between 1.0 and 1.0E7 (about the practical limit for a version number
;-)
18:23:41 <JibberJim> Okay, I'm going to accept, the 1.0, the 1.0-test
Nick uses, and that'll be all for now.
]]] - http://ilrt.org/discovery/chatlogs/rdfig/2002-02-14.txt

So the options from that chat:-

   * Publish a date stamped schema now
   * Push for some sort of consensus and EARL 1.0
   * Issue a version number 0.95 < x < 1.0

Pertinent document: http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Evolution Describes
pretty well the sort of problem that we're having.

* Semantics of EARL
I'm obsessed with providing machine readable semantics for EARL, but
I'm beginning to think that it's a misplaced use of resources
providing such a detailed RDF Schema when no one really cares what's
in it. By no "one", I mean tools or humans. The only time that the
stuff is useful is for upgrade conversion experiments, and even then
you don't need such a fine level of detail.

--
Kindest Regards,
Sean B. Palmer
@prefix : <http://purl.org/net/swn#> .
:Sean :homepage <http://purl.org/net/sbp/> .

Received on Thursday, 14 February 2002 22:48:04 UTC