Re: [Proposal] ISSUE-42: How does RDFa deal with @src

Hi Ivan,

Fair comments, but I'd like to follow this through a bit more.

First, what is the downside of adding extra triples, as long as they
are consistent? You don't need to use them, after all. (I'm not saying
there isn't a downside, just asking if anyone can think of one.)

I ask because I often find when trying to make use of the triples to
enhance a document, that you invariably need a label for the things
that you find in the document. Take a simple example, like a semantic
web browser that parses the RDF in a document (whether RDFa,
microformats, links to RDF/XML, etc.), places the triples in a data
store, and then provides options to the user on things they can do
with that data. Now, with data like a foaf:Person it's probably quite
easy, since you can display a menu option like "Add Ivan Herman's
details to your address book." But it becomes more difficult when you
want to display a menu option like "Upload 'portrait photo for Ivan'
to Flickr" or "Add tags to 'portrait photo for Ivan' to Flickr", if
you don't actually have some text to use.

The problem I keep coming up against is that the software I'm working
on constantly needs to go back to the original document to get
information that it can make use of, which feels wrong to me. I should
be able to 'act' on the data regardless of its source--or to put it a
different way, I should have everything I need in the triple store.

You could extend this logic to cover accessibility too; in the future
I'd imagine that accessibility software could make use of the triples
generated, just as much as it makes use of the source document.

But.... :)

As long as we don't rule this out for the future it's not a problem to
me if we leave it to one side for now. If you still disagree with
processing @alt and/or @longdesc I don't have a problem with marking
this as something we come back to in a future iteration.

Regards,

Mark

On 22/06/07, Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org> wrote:
>
>
> Mark Birbeck wrote:
> > Hi Ivan,
> >
> >> B.t.w., I realized yesterday evening (under the shower, the best place
> >> for these things:-) that this is wrong.
> >
> > :)
> >
> >> The range of rdfs:seeAlso is
> >> defined to be rdf:Resource by the RDF Semantics, ie, it should not be
> >> used with a Literal as an object.
> >
> > Right. That's why I was wondering if rdfs:seeAlso was a better choice
> > for @longdesc than dc:description, since @longdesc takes a URI. I'd
> > forgotten about rdfs:seeAlso until I saw your post.
> >
> >
> >> But there is also rdfs:comment, for
> >> example, that could be used instead of rdfs:label, so the original
> >> argument holds...
> >
> > Sure...I think you are right that there are better choices than
> > rdfs:label. We just need to alight on one and go with it. (And I
> > assume that your comment is a +1 for the idea that @alt should
> > actually be represented in triples, even if we're not yet sure what
> > triples?)
> >
>
> Actually, I am not convinced of that. I guess It is a question of
> general approach: I'd somehow prefer, as an author, _to be in control_
> over _all_ triples that are generated, and avoid any automatism. I may
> put in the 'alt' tag into my HTML file for reasons of accessibility, for
> example; I may _not_ want that information to appear in the triples.
>
> As a simple example: if I use an HTML file for my foaf file, too, I may
> have an image in that HTML file. As an HTML file I might put there an
> alt text with a pretty uninformative text like "portrait photo for Ivan"
> which is there so that screen readers would convey an information to a
> blind reader that, in fact, this photo is without an further info and is
> put there to make seeing people happy. While the photo reference would
> go into the foaf file as a depiction, and that is fine, generating an
> extra rdf:comment or rdf:label or anything else _automatically_ is a
> side effect of the mechanism that I may not want at all.
>
> Bottom line: no, I am not convinced.
>
> Ivan
>
>
> > Regards,
> >
> > Mark
> >
>
> --
>
> Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
> URL: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
> PGP Key: http://www.cwi.nl/%7Eivan/AboutMe/pgpkey.html
> FOAF: http://www.ivan-herman.net/foaf.rdf
>
>


-- 
  Mark Birbeck, formsPlayer

  mark.birbeck@x-port.net | +44 (0) 20 7689 9232
  http://www.formsPlayer.com | http://internet-apps.blogspot.com

  standards. innovation.

Received on Friday, 22 June 2007 11:24:12 UTC