Re: Exciting changes at Data.Southampton.ac.uk!

On 1 Apr 2011, at 08:23, Christopher Gutteridge wrote:

> After some heated debate after the backlash against me for my recent comments about PDF, I've been forced to shift to recommending PDF as the preferred format for the data.southampton.ac.uk site, both for publishing and importing data.
> 
> There are some issues with this and I know not every one will be happy with the decision; it wasn't easy to make... but on reflection, however, it's the right one. It is much easier for non programmers (the majority of people) to work with PDF documents and they are supported by pretty much every platform you can think of with a choice of tools and the benefit of familiarity.
> 
> We've provided a wrapper around 4store to make PDF the default output mode:
> http://sparql.data.southampton.ac.uk/?query=PREFIX+soton%3A+%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fid.southampton.ac.uk%2Fns%2F%3E%0D%0APREFIX+foaf%3A+%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fxmlns.com%2Ffoaf%2F0.1%2F%3E%0D%0APREFIX+skos%3A+%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2004%2F02%2Fskos%2Fcore%23%3E%0D%0APREFIX+geo%3A+%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2003%2F01%2Fgeo%2Fwgs84_pos%23%3E%0D%0APREFIX+rdfs%3A+%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2F01%2Frdf-schema%23%3E%0D%0APREFIX+org%3A+%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2Fns%2Forg%23%3E%0D%0APREFIX+spacerel%3A+%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fdata.ordnancesurvey.co.uk%2Fontology%2Fspatialrelations%2F%3E%0D%0APREFIX+ep%3A+%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Feprints.org%2Fontology%2F%3E%0D%0APREFIX+dct%3A+%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fpurl.org%2Fdc%2Fterms%2F%3E%0D%0APREFIX+bibo%3A+%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fpurl.org%2Fontology%2Fbibo%2F%3E%0D%0APREFIX+owl%3A+%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2002%2F07%2Fowl%23%3E%0D%0A%0D%0ASELECT+%3Fs+WHERE+{%0D%0A++++%3Fs+%3Fp+%3Fo+.%0D%0A}+LIMIT+10&output=pdf&jsonp=#results_table
> 

Hyperlinks in this PDF point to sources described in formats as heterogenous as HTML, RDF or JPG.
Could you also encapsulate them in PDF to make the job of the developer easier by dealing with a single format ?

Alex.


> And most information URIs can now be resolved to PDF, but we are sticking to HTML as the default (for now)
> http://data.southampton.ac.uk/products-and-services/FreshFruit.pdf
> 
> The full details and rationale are on our data blog
> http://blogs.ecs.soton.ac.uk/data/2011/04/01/pdf-selected-as-interchange-format/E 
> 
> -- 
> Christopher Gutteridge -- http://id.ecs.soton.ac.uk/person/1248
> 
> You should read the ECS Web Team blog: http://blogs.ecs.soton.ac.uk/webteam/
> 
> 
>

Received on Friday, 1 April 2011 08:28:11 UTC