Re: Moving rdf:Seq and friends to RDF/XML (was: Re: Minutes of RDF-WG F2F, Day 2)

It's a bit odd to make it a feature of RDF/XML when you *can*
serialize it in any concrete syntax.
I'm affraid that this would further confuse people trying to
understand the difference between the concrete syntax and the data
model...

  pa

On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 12:47 PM, Richard Cyganiak <richard@cyganiak.de> wrote:
> On 30 Oct 2012, at 18:24, Dan Brickley wrote:
>> "Millions (maybe billions) of files around the world using RDF?
>> Awesome, let's declare the markup they use to be broken! That'll teach
>> them to follow W3C recommendations..."
>
> How about changing the documentation of rdf:Seq and friends in the following way:
>
> * They are actually syntactic features of RDF/XML, like rdf:Description or rdf:about
>
> * Unlike rdf:Description and rdf:about, they are expressed as triples in the graph that one gets from parsing the RDF/XML document
>
> For example, here's the current definition of rdf:Alt:
>
> [[
> The rdf:Alt class is the class of RDF 'Alternative' containers. It is a subclass of rdfs:Container. Whilst formally it is no different from an rdf:Seqor an rdf:Bag, the rdf:Alt class is used conventionally to indicate to a human reader that typical processing will be to select one of the members of the container. The first member of the container, i.e. the value of the rdf:_1 property, is the default choice.
> ]]
>
> This could be changed to something like this:
>
> [[
> The rdf:Alt class is the class of RDF/XML 'Alternative" elements. It is a subclass of rdfs:Container. It has no formally defined meaning in RDF Semantics. However, it is used conventionally in the RDF/XML syntax to indicate to a human reader that typical processing will be to select one of the members of the container. The first member of the container, i.e. the value of the rdf:_1 property, is the default choice. The use of this class in new deployments that do not specifically target the RDF/XML syntax is discouraged.
> ]]
>
> Clearly, some subtlety in the phrasing is required. The gist would be that nothing changes for existing technologies like XMP or RSS 1.0 that are tightly bound to RDF/XML, but it sends a clear signal that one shouldn't use these guys in “modern” RDF.
>
> Best,
> Richard

Received on Wednesday, 31 October 2012 12:05:25 UTC