Re: Why not use DC?

Dan Brickley a écrit :
> It seems you want to limit things to content / works and content-bearing
> objects, rather than admit the entire universe here?

right; plus the content is supposed to be multimedia

> BTW re "Any Resource (as defined by [RFC 3986])", ... I wouldn't bother
> citing http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3986.html for a definition of
> resource. All it says is
> 
>      "This specification does not limit the scope of what might be a
>       resource; rather, the term "resource" is used in a general sense
>       for whatever might be identified by a URI."
> 
> I suggest instead "thing", since that's all RFC3986 "resource" means
> these days.

as a matter of fact, citing the RFC was a mean to prevent a too narrow
interpretation of resource (as "network retrievable resource").

>> Would "Any Resource (...) representing a media content" be clearer (this
>> is a question to the WG as well) ? It may seem a little too "concrete"
>> at first sight (e.g. implying "machine representation"), but I think the
>> following paragraph makes it clear it can be more abstract.
> 
> Taking my "thing" suggestion, that gives ... "Any thing representing
> media content". This seems a reasonable statement of intent. Perhaps the
> best way to make this concrete (amongst ourselves, if not in the spec)
> is by example. Which of the following are intended to be Media Resources:

my personal intuition would be to include:

> 3. An MPEG movie embedding metadata describing the film (from the DVD)
> 4. A videotape of the film
> 5. A set of several thousand identical 35mm films with that same content
> 8. The abstract notion of the W3C homepage

and to exclude:

> 1. a library MARC record describing a DVD
> 2a. a HTML page describing that same DVD (some specific DVD)
> 2b. an Amazon HTML page describing the general class of that DVD (ie.
> that you can buy)
> 10. Information about the creator of (9.).

and I'm not too sure about:

> 6. A rusty metal tin on a specific shelf of a national archive room,
> containing one of those films

(cf. below about physical objects)

> 7. The abstract notion of Shakespeare's Hamlet

tricky one; I first put it in the first category, just like I would have
from 'Notting Hill the movie'; but this seems a little different here (a
recording of the play, on the other hand, would definitely be a media
resource)

> 9. A printed, written transcript of the soundtrack to a film

although textual, it has some "multimedia" flavour...
And I notice that I put Shakespeare's Hamlet in the first category
without hesitating, while it is basically a textual document ;)

> This is just a rough list, from top of my head. Main points: do you
> include physical artifacts directly? does there need to be a digital
> representation involved somewhere?

I would say we include physical artifacts, as they embody abstract media
resources. However, I guess there are ontological traps here, and that
ultimately, the ma:title of a videotape of Notting Hill is really the
ma:title of the movie, of which my videotape is a copy of a particular
cut...

> Thinking again about
> 
> "Any thing/resource representing media content", isn't that almost
> circular or somehow redundant, if "media" is taken to mean the carrier
> or means by which content/information is represented or transmitted?

I think you're right. What about "related to", then :-P
Or may be "conveying a media content", as you put it in the beginning of
this mail?

> Can you give some more borderline counter-examples (apart from the
> Director) of situations where something is *not* a media object?

Not too sure at the moment, as your mail raised a number of interesting
questions about resources textual resources that can foster media
resources (Shakespeare's Hamlet) or derive from them (a transcript).

It could be argued that the transcript "conveys" in a sense the
soundtrack, or even than Shakespear's text "conveys" the possible
performances and their recording...

The range of "conveying" seems quite subjective, but after all, keeping
this ambiguity does not necessarily harm...

> Sorry for the pedantry! This is really nice and important work, and I
> especially appreciate the effort you've all put into comparing existing
> efforts...

I think we have spent to much time discussing this matter to consider it
vain pedantry :)

  pa