Re: RDF-ISSUE-24 (Deprecate Containers): Should we deprecate RDF containers (Alt, Bag, Seq)? [Cleanup tasks]

On Fri, 2011-04-08 at 10:28 +0200, Dan Brickley wrote:
> On 8 April 2011 00:04, RDF Working Group Issue Tracker
> <sysbot+tracker@w3.org> wrote:
> >
> > RDF-ISSUE-24 (Deprecate Containers): Should we deprecate RDF containers (Alt, Bag, Seq)? [Cleanup tasks]
> >
> > http://www.w3.org/2011/rdf-wg/track/issues/24
> >
> > Raised by: Sandro Hawke
> > On product: Cleanup tasks
> >
> > The RDF 1999 and 2004 Recommendations include vocabulary and syntax
> > (in RDF/XML) for RDF "containers", Alt, Bag, and Seq.
> >
> > Although these features are being used, such as in rss 0.91, some experts
> > advise data providers to avoid them.
> 
> That's RSS 1.0 - http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/

Fixed, thanks.

> Can we avoid what Wikipedia call 'weasel words'?
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(words_to_watch)#Unsupported_attributions
> "... some people say, it is believed, many are of the opinion, most
> feel, experts declare, it is often reported, it is widely thought,
> research has shown, science says, it was proven ..."
> 
> It's worth citing the critique(s) explicitly. "Some experts" in this
> community can be found to say more or less anything!

If you can find some useful resources, that'd be great.  I looked a bit
but couldn't find anything worth citing, so fell back on this phrasing.

> Containers are certainly a nuisance to process (as are lists) in RDF.
> Not because of the inherent awfulness of the design, but because
> representing ordering in a fact-based system is inherently difficult,
> especially when we restrict to binary relations.
> 
> To my mind, rdf:Alt is worthless and barely coherent. rdf:Bag is almost as bad.
> 
> rdf:Seq does have some merit, and some serious 'in the wild' usage.
> 
> In a FOAF context (and informed by various discussions with Tom Baker
> of Dublin Core over the years) we chose not to use the word
> "Deprecate".
> 
> Instead, we mark certain vocabulary constructs as "archaic forms".
> That would be my preference. Old documents that used them still mean
> what they mean, and nobody is forced to update them for fear of them
> becoming unreadable. But the 'archaic' flag is a nudge towards
> modernisation.
> 
> If we're seriously thinking to deprecate these constructs - we ought
> to contact Adobe ASAP. They have the biggest problem since Adobe XMP
> instance data is embedded inside PDF, JPEG etc files, and so not
> centrally fixable the way many other deployments (eg. social networks)
> might be.

Now that we're clarified what's meant by "deprecate" is the same as
"mark as archiac", do you still think it's important to involve Adobe?
They were, of course, formally informed about this Working Group on
several occasions.

    -- Sandro

> cheers,
> 
> Dan
> 
> > They have no syntactic support in RDFa or Turtle.  Should the WG align with this advice and say these
> > features are only to be used for backward compatibility?  (That is,
> > RDF/XML parsers must continue to support the syntax, and libraries
> > should allow applications to use the features to interoperate with
> > legacy RDF systems.)
> >
> > Note that RDF "Containers" (rdf:Alt, rdf:Bag, rdf:Seq) are distinct
> > from RDF "Collections" (rdf:List).  This issue is about Containers
> > only.
> >
> > http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-primer-20040210/#containers
> > http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/wiki/RDF_Core_Work_Items#Data_Model_Issues
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> 
>

Received on Friday, 8 April 2011 19:42:05 UTC