Re: why we need GRDDL (Re: Grddl et al)

> > Procedurally, as Alan mentioned on yesterday's telecon, the
> > commitment to deliver GRDDL has already been made [1].  People can
> > argue what exactly the commitment meands (eg Bijan's point that it
> > doesn't necessarily mean XSLT or on-line), but I think people
> > reading the charter could reasonably understand us to be promising a
> > working on- line XSLT-based transform -- that's certainly how I read
> > it.  I think any attempt to back out on that deliverable would need
> > to be renegotiated with the broader community (technically via a
> > re-chartering, but a broad discussion across the Semantic Web
> > community would probably be enough).  Basically, if we're going to
> > break a promise, we have to make sure no one will mind, right?

> ...how would the above proposal break this promise? It doesn't say  
> "don't have a GRDDL/XSLT pointed at", but it says "have a  GRDDL/XSLT  
> pointed at, possibly amongst others".

Where are you reading that?   What I'm reading in our charter [1] is:

    2.1  Other Deliverables

       Other deliverables may include (at least):

          * XML Exchange syntax for OWL 1.1, with GRDDL enabled
            namespace document (to be decided by the group whether this
            document should go through the W3C Recommendation track or
            would be published as a W3C Note). 

I read that to mean we MAY deliver an XML Serialization, and if we do
so, it MUST use GRDDL. 

I agree it doesn't speak to Bijan's point about what it means to
implement GRDDL.  And see how he can claim a broken promise just as
easily as I can.

WHICH BRINGS US BACK to a point I've made before about how turning to
the Charter annoys people and is rarely constructive.  And I did it this
time.  I'm very sorry.  I had the best intentions, of course.  :-)
Oooops.   :-(   Sorry, again....

To be more constructive, perhaps I can say that I am aware of OWL users
(and I may or may not formally represent them [2] -- I'm not quite sure
about that right now) who will be unhappy if OWL 2 comes along with an
XML syntax not backed up by an on-line XSLT-based GRDDL transform.
Let's try to find a way to keep them from being too unhappy with us, to
keep them as supporters of OWL and OWL 2.

       -- Sandro

[1] http://www.w3.org/2007/06/OWLCharter
[2] http://www.w3.org/2005/ajar/tab


> > So, is there some big problem with writting the XSLT?
> 
> I didn't say there was one - I only think that having XSLT being  
> "sticky out" might make some people think/believe/assume that they  
> need it to do anything with OWL.

That seems implausible to me.  Any time we mention GRDDL in the specs or
the namespace document we can clearly state what it's there for (namely,
to allow systems which implement GRDDL and which read OWL's RDF/XML
serialization to automatically read OWL's XML serialization).

       -- Sandro

Received on Friday, 9 May 2008 13:04:30 UTC