Re: Why Turtle Matters

On 8/23/12 11:05 PM, Paul Tyson wrote:
> On Thu, 2012-08-23 at 13:02 -0400, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
>> All,
>>
>> Of late, I've been writing a series of posts [1][2][3] that demonstrate
>> why Turtle is such an important syntax for crafting RDF documents.
>> Basically, its solves the biggest challenges to Linked Data
>> comprehension which include the following:
>>
>> 1. triple visibility
>> 2. triple comprehension.
>>
>> Historically, RDF/XML was an utter dud re. the above. History will
>> record this as one of the biggest snafus of an era. By that I mean,
>> putting such a misguided syntax at the front door of something so
>> important.
> Sounds like a lot of people have some sort of hateful grudge against
> RDF/XML. I won't dispute its shortcomings, nor defend W3C's tardy
> acceptance of other RDF exchange syntaxes.

No, that's a typical reaction to a misconception. For instance, my 
company works with tons of RDF/XML, still do right now, but that's in 
context where its most useful i.e., transforming non RDF data  to RDF.
>
> But, as a bridge to RDF from hierarchically-structured data (e.g. XML),
> it really is quite elegant and useful--a point that I wish the
> RDF/XML-bashers would recognize.

Yes, as per my comment above. That doesn't mean it should occupy its all 
encompassing role with is a major net negative.

>
> As for newcomers mistaking RDF/XML for just another XML schema and
> coming away with a greater dislike for both XML and RDF, that's an
> unfortunate outcome due (at least partly) to poor publicity and
> advocacy.

Yes, but also due to gut reactions to RDF/XML criticisms that ultimately 
skew the bigger problem of concern. I've always tried to emphasize that 
criticizing RDF/XML doesn't imply its useless.

> I suppose people had trouble with XSLT and XML Schema for the
> same reasons. Any semantically-laden use of XML will cause this problem,
> because XML is usually taught just as syntax and most people do not
> expect to have to think very hard about the meaning.
>
> What this comes down to for LDP systems is that while RDF/XML need not
> be front and center, it would be good if LDP systems accepted RDF/XML
> input so that those who need to work with large corpora of structured
> documents would have an easier path.

Yes, of course.

>
> Regards,
> --Paul
>
>
>
>
>


-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
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