Re: Dons flame resistant (3 hours) interface about Linked Data URIs

On 10 Jul 2009, at 15:36, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
> Steve Harris wrote:
>> On 10 Jul 2009, at 14:31, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
>>> Steve et. al,
>>>
>>> If we are going to take the "how the Web was born" theme re.  
>>> figuring out the path forward, then what's wrong with RDFa? If  
>>> people sort of know how to write HTML, why not show them how to  
>>> add rich metadata via RDFa? That said, we have a deeper problem  
>>> re. Linked Data, and in my opinion it starts not fulling  
>>> expressing the essence of the matter with clarity. The fundamental  
>>> issues are
>>
>> RDFa doesn't generally solve the Syntax complexity problem.
> It solves the "groking what your actually doing"problem for those   
> who  author  HTML  docs.

Perhaps, but I'm not totally convinced. I think the mapping between  
RDFa and triples is sufficiently complex that it may not help.

>> Though, possibly RDFa documents that are not "nice" HTML (ie. not  
>> really readable by humans) could be quite hacker-friendly. I've  
>> been meaning to look into this.
> RDFa is the best starting point for enhancing Metadata carried by an  
> HTML document. Once you understand that you are describing  
> something, and that you do so using Subject, Predicate, Object  
> statements, the essence of the matter is much much clearer.

If people make the leap between RDFa syntax and triples, yes.

> Once  high level annotation tools for embedding RDFa in HTML are  
> unleashed, this whole matter will become much clearer to a very  
> broad spectrum of Web users :-)

Now, that I definitely disagree with. The broad spectrum of web users  
do not edit HTML, and I would guess that the majority of HTML out  
there is machine generated. At least in part.

That's not to say that I think such a tool is a bad idea, I don't, but  
that it wont be any kind of universal panacea.

- Steve