Re: Signing Document and PICS

Russell O'Connor <roconnor@math.berkeley.edu> wrote:

>> have an RDF statement at the top. RDF used to be called PICS-NG, so they're
>> quite similar. Basically, the name value pair would be creator = "Russell
>> O'Connor".
> Thanks, this is a really good idea.  I do have a few questions.  Maybe you
> can point me to the right documentation.  I can't just insert the RDF into
> the head of the document because it will no longer be valid HTML 4.0.

I stole this idea from:

http://www.w3.org/RDF/FAQ

Which may answer some questions. If your document is an XHTML page, then you
can stick it in since it is safely in another namespace. If it's not XHTML
then you can convert it at:

http://check.theinfo.org/html/tidy

> Also, the RDF data is useless to me without a digital signature.  PICS has
> DSIG, where is the analogus thing for RDF?

You'll want to use the Web-of-Trust's Assurance:

<wot:assurance rdf:resource="(uri-of-document-signature)" />

Now you'll probably want to add more information about you (a link to your
PGP key, etc.) in which case you can put up an RDF file like this:

<rdf:RDF 
  xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
  xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"
  xmlns:wn="http://xmlns.com/wordnet/1.6/"
  xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
  xmlns="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/">
<wn:Person rdf:ID="russell">
  <name>Russell O'Connor</name>
  <mbox rdf:resource="mailto:roconnor@math.berkeley.edu"/>
  <homepage rdf:resource="http://www.math.berkeley.edu/~roconnor/"/>
  <pubkeyAddress 
rdf:resource="http://www.math.berkeley.edu/~roconnor/russellgpg.txt"/>
</wn:Person>
</rdf:RDF>

Now that you've given yourself an ID, you can update your page's RDF
assertion to point to your RDF description on the Web. So all together that
would be:

<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
         xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
         xmlns:wot="http://xmlns.com/wot/0.1/>
  <rdf:Description rdf:about=""

      dc:title       = "My document"
      dc:description = "My ramblings about my summer vacation."
      dc:date        = "2001-09-10"
  >
     <dc:creator rdf:resource="(uri-of-your-rdf-description)#russell" />
     <wot:assurance rdf:resource="(uri-of-document-signature)" />

  </rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>

Congratulations! You're a true Semantic Web pioneer.

For those playing along at home, I've put up a quick start guide at:

http://logicerror.com/signYourPage

-- 
[ Aaron Swartz | me@aaronsw.com | http://www.aaronsw.com ]

Received on Friday, 6 April 2001 15:28:54 UTC