Re: RDF Primer Draft - comments

Hi Guus,

Thanks a lot! It's great Yves and you put great care in addressing these issues.
The suggested changes are very fine by me.

Best regards,

Antoine

On 2/21/14 1:48 PM, Guus Schreiber wrote:
> Antoine,
>
> Sorry it took so long to respond to you last points. See inline.
>
> On 10-02-14 15:38, Antoine Isaac wrote:
>> Dear Guus, all,
>>
>> Thanks you very much for the answers. The changes done have solved many
>> of the issues I had raised!
>>
>> My reaction on the few issues that are left (semi-)open:
>>
>>>>
>>>> First a general editorial comment: I like the way notes flag slightly
>>>> less essential details. But in a text that is quite compact, having this
>>>> many notes may be counter-productive. Perhaps a couple of them can be
>>>> integrated in the main text, like the one on IRIs in section 1?
>>>
>>> I'll respond to this issue in more detail in the upcoming response to
>>> Tom, who made specific suggestions about the NOTEs.
>>
>>
>> Fine. I trust that handling Tom's comments on NOTEs will handle mine!
>
> Originally we had 14 NOTEs. Only 5 remain in the current version.
>
>>>> - 3.5: I know this section has been discussed, so perhaps my comments
>>>> will come across as a re-hash, or going against some recent agreement on
>>>> the text. Sorry if it's the case...
>>>> Even though I really want something on named graphs to be said, I really
>>>> find some points quite hard for a primer:
>>>>
>>>> -- "An RDF dataset may have [...] at most one default graph (i.e. a
>>>> graph without a name).": do we really need to mention the constraint on
>>>> the default graph, or even default graphs, in this Primer? I believe
>>>> that the text could work well without writing about these.
>>>
>>> We need to talk about them, but I agree we could be clearer. I suggest
>>> to talk about "at most one unnamed graph, and use the term "default"
>>> only in parentheses. See the new ED.
>>
>>
>> The trick on the "default" named Graph makes the text easier to swallow.
>> At least for the people who are really to invest more time in
>> understanding what it should be (but I won't re-write my point about
>> just removing this from the Primer ;-) )
>
> Understood. As SPARQL uses the term "default graph" we need to make Primer reader readers awre of it.
>
>>>> -- "RDF 1.1 does not specify a particular semantics for the relation
>>>> between the "graph name" and the graph": I know the RDF group has
>>>> discussed the issue at length, but this sentence sounds a bit like a
>>>> joke, without any further precision the motivation.
>>>> The issue is that the reference to [RDF11-MT,
>>>> http://www.w3.org/TR/2013/CR-rdf11-mt-20131105/#rdf-datasets] doesn't
>>>> really work for me: I guess the solution is in the following sentence
>>>> there: "This allows IRI referring to other kinds of entities, such as
>>>> persons, to be used in a dataset to identify graphs of information
>>>> relevant to the entity denoted by the graph name IRI." But I can't parse
>>>> it and come with a concrete example (ie., an example with realistic IRIs
>>>> involved in realistic triples) that would show me what's at stake.
>>>
>>> I'm not sure i follow. This text is not in the Primer, nor in RDF
>>> Semantics. Could you clarify? Perhaps an older version?
>>
>>
>> In the version of the Primer that I've read, there was a NOTE with
>> "However RDF 1.1 does not specify a particular semantics for the
>> relation between the "graph name" and the graph" [RDF11-MT].". My
>> problem was that this was a strange sentence, and that the reference
>> given to the RDF semantics (that was my second quote) did little to
>> explain it clearly. If all the NOTE is dropped then it's not a problem
>> for the RDF Primer anymore.
>
> Right, NOTE was dropped.
>
>>>> -- "RDF provides no way to convey this semantic assumption [...] Those
>>>> readers will need to rely on out-of-band knowledge to interpret the
>>>> dataset in the intended way.": here "no way" and "out-of-band" read as
>>>> if it is impossible to convey the assumptions in RDF at all. As you've
>>>> discussed, it seems possible to devise appropriate vocabularies (even
>>>> though it's outside of the standard)...
>>>
>>> This wording is an essential part of the compromise we reached in the
>>> WG. I'd prefer to keep it this way. Pls check also the revised text in
>>> the new ED; maybe this helps. If you still think it is unacceptable
>>> for a Primer, feel free to say so and I will propose to reopen the
>>> (editorial) discussion in the WG.
>>
>>
>> It is not 'unacceptable', sure. But I don't see why a compromise would
>> force you to stick with a wording so strong ("no way", "out-of-band")
>> that it feels contradictory with the fact that the group does suggest
>> solutions to the issue.
>> Granted, the options from [RDF11-DATASETS] are not part of the core
>> standard. Yet they exist, and they are represented with RDF. So 'RDF
>> provides no way to convey this semantic assumption' reads wrong.
>> Couldn't it be just replaced by "RDF provides no standard way to convey
>> this semantic assumption"?
>
> I suggest to add indeed "standard" in the first sentence. I can also suggest to explain "out-of-band" a bit more, "e.g. community practice". But for the reasons stated earlier we want to leave it at that.
>
>>>> - 7. The reference to http://datahub.io/organization/lodcloud could
>>>> raise problems. The Data Hub's move from 'groups' to 'organizations' and
>>>> the fact that a dataset can be in only one organization has resulted
>>>> many datasets disappearing from their original grouping. I'm afraid the
>>>> same thing may have happened for the LODCloud group. The LODCloud group
>>>> still includes RDF datasets and can be used as a source of example, but
>>>> I believe it's not representing the most recent LOD Cloud as we know it
>>>> at http://lod-cloud.net/state/.
>>>
>>> OK,. For the moment I'll add an issue and discuss the best point to
>>> refer to in the WG.
>>
>>
>> OK. I'm really curious to see the outcome of the discussion!
>
> There does not appear an optimal solution. We changed the link to
>
>      http://datahub.io/dataset
>
> which seems to be a better place  to link to than the one before.
>
> New version is at [1].
>
> Thanks again for your comments,
> Guus
>
> [1] https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/rdf/raw-file/default/rdf-primer/index.html#section-multiple-graphs
>
>> cheers,
>>
>> Antoine

Received on Friday, 21 February 2014 19:21:04 UTC