JSON-LD serialization and linked data support

On today's call the topic of serializations came up and a question seemed to be raised over whether JSON-LD should be used (perhaps I heard incorrectly)

There are some strong reasons to continue to require JSON-LD as a mandatory serialization, the abstract argument being the value of linked data on the back end.

A specific concrete example of the value of linked data in combination with annotations might be "CATCH: Common Annotation, Tagging, and Citation at Harvard"

[[

It is designed to interoperate with third-party annotation tools to aggregate and associate contextualized annotation metadata from various pedagogical and research tools with reference to persistent digital media in repositories, such as the Harvard Library DRS. - See more at: https://osc.hul.harvard.edu/liblab/projects/catch-common-annotation-tagging-and-citation-harvard#sthash.fr7L4qa3.dpuf

]]

Do we have other concrete examples of how the linked data aspect of the Open Annotation model adds value to annotations? Pointers would be welcome.

I'm concerned about specifying multiple serializations as we have to be more careful of interoperability in this case, specifically is round-tripping without information loss despite the serialization a potential issue? More serializations also mean more testing.

In a related thought, is directly embedding JSON-LD in HTML ( http://www.w3.org/TR/json-ld/#embedding-json-ld-in-html-documents ) a viable option? What is the status of browser support for this? If it is supported (or is in progress) what is the case for HTML serialization as an alternative? Would it be more productive to focus on generic support for JSON-LD in browsers rather than a specific annotation serialization?

The fundamental issue I heard us discuss is that even with all our efforts to simplify the JSON-LD serialization, there will remain some aspects that do not appear 'natural' to JSON developers.  The next question I have is whether these aspects can be managed with suitable libraries etc. 

Thanks

regards, Frederick

Frederick Hirsch

www.fjhirsch.com
@fjhirsch

Received on Wednesday, 12 August 2015 22:15:38 UTC