Adherence to standards vs specialized functionality

The principles are pretty fundamental:

*  one from the web architecture, that every resource has a global identity
*  and one from RDF, that the graph is an open world model where the
context of an assertion has no bearing on its scope: all assertions are of
global scope

If we're going to ignore fundamentals like those, we should stop and
reassess the value of all existing work because we would be making
tradeoffs at the edges that break the core.  If we're going to make such
tradeoffs, then we should do it from the core out not the edges in.  That
would mean, essentially, starting again.

Consider the agony of dealing with badly formed HTML and having to guess at
the intent of the author, compared to well-formed XML. There's a cost at
creation time to adhere to the specifications, but it makes everything much
easier down the line.  I sure hope we're past the stage of wanting to
define the equivalent of kludgey, sloppy HTML.

Rob

On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 11:50 AM, Denenberg, Ray <rden@loc.gov> wrote:

> From: Doug Schepers
> > Regarding assumptions, for example, there seems to be an implicit
> assumption
> > that we need to prioritize adherence to the RDF model over performance or
> > specialized functionality;
>
> Doug - what would be the RDF model principles relevant to this issue?
>
> Ray
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
Rob Sanderson
Information Standards Advocate
Digital Library Systems and Services
Stanford, CA 94305