Re: ODF and semantic web

Mark Birbeck wrote:
> Hi Ivan,
> 
> GRDDL is a necessary hack to allow legacy mark-up to be made
> 'semantic'. But I don't think anyone would seriously suggest that you
> can build a 'semantic web' on such a flaky framework. Which means that
> it's not a good idea to design languages on the basis that 'it doesn't
> matter what I do, because I can always GRDDL it'.
> 
> So, I'm going to save my 'yey' for later. I'm hoping that there will
> be some serious coordination on this issue, and anything less is a
> missed opportunity.
> 
> It will be interesting to see if the two standards organisations can
> rise to the challenge.
> 
> All the best,
> 
> Mark
> 

I disagree with the sentiment:

 > I don't think anyone would seriously suggest that you
 > can build a 'semantic web' on such a flaky framework.

Clearly, once a particular format for expressing metadata has widespread 
adoption, or within an application that uses a particular format 
extensively, it is well worth the effort to code up specific rules for 
that format, and not rely on a general purpose mechanism like GRDDL 
(that is less efficient and introduces some security issues, easily 
addressable for any limited set of transforms).

But, equally clearly, while developing a new format and during its 
initial deployment a flexible framework, like GRDDL, is very useful.

Also, a framework that has made it through to rec is more useful (and 
less 'flaky') than one that hasn't.

So in terms of ODF

a) I think that making their schema GRDDL aware is an easy win, and an 
easy way of publishing the semantic intent of their documents

b) this is not a particular wonderful long term plan, and as a developer 
of a semantic web framework, with responsibility for XML I/O I would 
expect a feature request for specific support for ODF, if it is at all 
successful. I would begin to think about addressing this six months 
after ODF was stable.

c) GRDDL acts as a working solution, while developers like me allocate 
time and effort to do a better implementation

Jeremy

Received on Monday, 15 October 2007 11:10:57 UTC