Re: RDFa API - adding Namespace

Can that be one of the 'third box' features? Ie, those that would be useful for the RDF programmers but not really necessary for RDFa?

Ivan

On Oct 11, 2010, at 14:54 , Manu Sporny wrote:

> On 10/11/2010 04:19 AM, Nathan wrote:
>> perhaps if we ask "why not add it?", is there a good reason not to?
> 
> Yes, there are several very good reasons not to: 1) it adds another way
> of creating CURIEs whose benefits are not clear 2) it requires the
> creation of an object to specify a CURIE, 3) it requires the developer
> to manage the CURIE separately from the RDFa API and 4) It is more
> complex than necessary.
> 
> When we did the second pass of the design phase on the RDFa API, we
> attempted to make sure that it was a simple as possible for those not
> familiar with RDF. We wanted to make sure that people could use the API
> without having deep knowledge about "Namespaces" or CURIEs. We wanted to
> make sure that people didn't have to create objects just in order to
> specify an IRI. In short, we ensured that only strings were used to
> interface with the RDFa API.
> 
> In other words, creating an object just to create a CURIE was an
> anti-pattern. We didn't want people to do this:
> 
> doSomething(foaf('name'));
> 
> Instead, we wanted this:
> 
> doSomething("foaf:name");
> 
> We believe that the second is easier to understand (it's just a string,
> which is interpreted in one way - via the Context), it's more compact
> and leads to more readable code.
> 
> What's wrong with this (which is supported by the current API)?
> 
> var t1 = data.createTriple(me, "rdf:type", "foaf:Person");
> 
> Why do we need to make it any more complicated than that?
> 
> -- manu
> 
> -- 
> Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny)
> President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> blog: Saving Journalism - The PaySwarm Developer API
> http://digitalbazaar.com/2010/09/12/payswarm-api/
> 


----
Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
mobile: +31-641044153
PGP Key: http://www.ivan-herman.net/pgpkey.html
FOAF: http://www.ivan-herman.net/foaf.rdf