Re: Not waiting on browser manufacturers for RDFa 1.1

On Jul 16, 2010, at 18:52 , Shane McCarron wrote:

[snip]
> 
> I disagree.  It is only quicker and simpler in *some* contexts.  My parser doesn't have an in-built JSON parser.  It is, however, an RDFa parser already!  And it does a great job of extracting triples.  I can search those triples, extract the bits that I care about to learn about prefix declarations, term definitions, default vocabulary values, etc.  It just works.  I recognize that in some environments there is an in-built JSON parser, and in those environments it would be potentially easier / quicker to extract the data from JSON.  But surely, even in those environments, parsing RDFa also just works.  If it didn't, the basic parser wouldn't work in the first place!
> 
> To sum up... I don't see a need for us to codify this.  I certainly don't see a need for us to mandate support of a JSON format for profiles.  It would be an added burden on 100% of profile authors for the benefit of a subset of parser developers.  Since profile authors should, by definition, outnumber parser developers, I think they should win.  
[snip]
> 
> For all these reasons, I am convinced that RDFa is the correct format to mandate for RDFa Profiles.

I agree.

Note that the current text allows for other RDF serializations to be used, only RDFa is mandatory (my implementation allows, beyond RDFa, any serialization format that is usable with the underlying RDFLib library). On the other hand, based on the report of the RDF Next Step workshop[1] there is a high probability that a new RDF Working Group will standardize a JSON serialization for RDF. If this happens, this would automatically ripple to RDF libraries and make the JSON format usable for @profile files, too. 

ivan


[1] http://www.w3.org/2009/12/rdf-ws/Report.html


> 
> -- 
> Shane P. McCarron                          Phone: +1 763 786-8160 x120
> Managing Director                            Fax: +1 763 786-8180
> ApTest Minnesota                            Inet: shane@aptest.com
> 
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> 


----
Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
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