Re: RDFa and Web Directions North 2009

Hi Ian,

This is approximately the 5th time we get to this point in the debate,
so let me attempt a different response to see if we can un-wedge
ourselves :)

> | The system uses RDFa to speed up user interaction when editing 
> | structured data. Instead of communicating with a remote server, the 
> | WSWYIG editor uses a direct manipulation based on RDFa and updates the 
> | server with the generated RDF graph only when the interaction finishes.
> 
> It's not clear here what makes RDF any more interesting to the solution 
> than, say, JSON, or SQL, or XML.

If we were only trying to solve the "how do I find better music online?"
problem, we probably would come up with a much more domain-specific
approach than RDFa.

If we were only trying to solve the "how do I express copyright
licensing on videos" problem, ditto.

And so on with each individual use case taken *in isolation*.

But when you take all of these use cases together, it become clear that,
if we generally had a way to express structured data within existing
HTML pages, using a universal data parser, with the ability to mix and
match properties such as licensing, bit rate, title, etc... then these
individual problems would be much easier to solve based on this one
underlying technology.

So, can we look at the use cases as a whole?

> The SearchMonkey problem description, while not really phrased as a 
> problem, is much closer to the kind of thing I'm looking for in order to 
> evaluate the proposals here.

Yes, because SearchMonkey is a very particular use case that inherently
leverages the multi-purpose capabilities of RDFa.

> The ccREL use case description doesn't describe the problem. It just 
> describes what ccREL is. It would be helpful if the problem was actually 
> explained, e.g. "Authors need a way to make sure that their content reuses 
> other content only in the manner allowed by that other content".

>From the Background Section (Section #2) of ccREL:

"""
Simple programs should thus be able to answer questions like:

  * Under what license has a copyright holder released her
    work, and what are the associated permissions and
    restrictions?

  * Can I redistribute this work for commercial purposes?

  * Can I distribute a modified version of this work?

  * How should I assign credit to the original author?
"""


-Ben

Received on Friday, 13 February 2009 23:29:30 UTC