Re: JSON-LD Basic

On 06/24/2011 02:48 AM, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
> Some fundamental points that don't come through via the abstract:
> 
> 1. Syntactic incompatibility != conceptual incompatibility
> 2. Microdata, Microformats, RDFa all provide syntax for embedding graphs
> within HTML documents

I'll try to make these two more clear in the spec.

> 3. Linked Data is about using de-referencable URIs in object (resource)
> description (respresentation) oriented graphs where each URI resolves to
> a representation of its referent i.e., graph based structured data
> representation via hyperlinks.

I don't think beginners are going to understand a sentence like this. I
think I know what you're getting at though and will try to figure out
some language to make it a bit more clear to a beginner.

Keep in mind that while you're focusing on the prose, I didn't when
drafting JSON-LD Basic. I just paid attention to what Glenn, Brian
Peterson and you were saying and tried to accomplish as many of those
goals as possible (in the limited amount of time I had available that day).

> If the critical points above are easily discerned from the abstract, we
> finally have what I think most people seek: a simply spec for making
> Linked Data via a JSON based syntax.

My read is that you'd like it to talk about RDF as little as possible.

Thinking out loud now:

I think we could not mention RDF at all in the JSON-LD Basic document...
perhaps there are two document conformance levels (Basic and Advanced)
and one processor conformance level (Advanced)?

I think that we may be able to pull that off without causing any
upwards/downwards compatibility problems.

Basically, with JSON-LD Basic, there is one primary kernel of truth:

If you have a valid @context, you have Linked Data.

What your Linked Data means is fully up to the @context document... and
most people don't have to care about that at all. They just take their
JSON markup, add a context and they're done. They know that anybody else
that uses that same context with the same attributes expresses the same
information. Full stop.

The JSON-LD Advanced spec outlines how to take this JSON and convert it
to RDF (for those that care about that sort of thing). The JSON-LD
Advanced spec also deals with some of the more advanced technical
topics, like normalization and digital signatures on graphs, that
PaySwarm needs to succeed.

Now, we may need to change some JSON-LD Advanced bits and pieces to
ensure that the above holds true, but does that seem like a better
direction to you?

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny)
President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: PaySwarm Developer Tools and Demo Released
http://digitalbazaar.com/2011/05/05/payswarm-sandbox/

Received on Tuesday, 28 June 2011 02:27:00 UTC