Re: Self-descriptive assertions

On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 02:17:02PM -0500, Thomas B. Passin wrote:
> >True, but why is that bad?  I believe it's because - as I said above -
> >that the recipient would believe that the sender is trying to
> >communicate the graph.
> >
> 
> But the whole point is that the sender has no say in how the recipient 
> chooses to process the representation.

Right ...

>  Maybe I want to get an example 
> of application/rdf+xml to illustrate an article I am writing.  Maybe I 
> want to extract certain information using xslt and never need to form 
> triples.  Maybe I want to apply some non-RDF processing as I build the 
> graph.  Maybe I want to somehow canonicalize the data and end up with a 
> different (but we hope equivalent) one.  Maybe I have a quad system and 
> want to load the RDF into quad statements.
> 
> Or maybe I want to do what you think I ought to do.
> 
> So the only area we can have a reasonable hope of working with here is 
> what the _sender_ may have wanted to communicate beyond the actual data 
> contained in the application/rdf+xml representation.

Yes, exactly.  That's what I mean by "communicate the graph".  If I
use text/plain, I'm not communicating the graph, because the message
doesn't include any information would inform a recipient that the
message semantics depend on the RDF specs.

In both cases (application/rdf+xml and text/plain) there is no
requirement that the recipient extract the graph, as that would be a
requirement on processing.

> Now, the sender _may_ be wanting you to think "Yea, verily, this 
> information is true, and I _am_ expecting everyone to apply RDF 
> interpretation rules to it", but there are many other possibilities.

Yup.

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca

Received on Thursday, 25 March 2004 23:12:57 UTC