Re: Ongoing objection to RDFa Profiles format (as XHTML+RDFa)

Hi Toby,

On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 3:04 PM, Toby Inkster <tai@g5n.co.uk> wrote:
> On Wed, 08 Sep 2010 06:44:41 -0400
> Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com> wrote:
>
>> #1) We have a software architecture where the foundations depend on
>> the finished product.
>
> It's really just a case of recursion. Anyone who's taken a course in
> programming will have had to write a function like this:
>
>        function fib ($n)
>        {
>                if (!is_int($n) || $n < 0)
>                        return null;
>                elseif ($n < 2)
>                        return $n;
>                else
>                        return fib($n-1) + fib($n-2);
>        }
>
> Recursive programming is not inherently bad design; it's sometimes a
> little inefficient, and you need to take care to avoid loops, but it
> can be quite a neat way of coding.

As I said in the other thread, it's not about recursion. It's about
making one 'layer' of an application dependent on a layer 'above' it.

This also is not necessarily architecturally wrong, but as I described
in the other thread it means you cannot implement a part, without
implementing the whole...a kind of synecdoche model of programming!


>> #2) It's not good RDF...it's a pattern that no-one else uses.
>
> Having profiles *at all* is something that no-one else does.
>
> Personally I'm still not convinced we need such a feature.

OWL allows external documents to be imported, which is close.

However, my objection is not along the internal/external axis, but
based on the use of RDF to define prefix mappings, when RDF is
unnecessary.


>> #3) To implement it properly you need to be able to query the triple
>>     store.
>
> True, but that doesn't have to be using SPARQL - a single iteration over
> the triple store ought to be sufficient to extract all the data you
> need from a profile.

As I explained, the exact mechanism doesn't matter. The point is that
we have subtly changed what an RDFa processor is from something that
processes a document and populates a triple-store, to something that
also has access to that triple-store.

It's yet another example of sloppy design.

Regards,

Mark

--
Mark Birbeck, webBackplane

mark.birbeck@webBackplane.com

http://webBackplane.com/mark-birbeck

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Received on Wednesday, 8 September 2010 15:15:32 UTC