Re: Important Question re. WebID Verifiers & Linked Data

On 12/22/11 11:33 AM, Mo McRoberts wrote:
> On 22 Dec 2011, at 16:23, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
>
>> Turtle is missing from the list. Contemporary Linked Data tools prefer Turtle over RDF/XML. By this I mean: there are far more tools today that process Turtle than there are those that process RDF/XML.
> citation?
>
> There are lots of tools which support Turtle, and some people find it easier to read and write by hand than RDF/XML.
>
> No software which supports Turtle is meant to be supporting that and *not* RDF/XML, given RDF/XML's position in the specs…

You can pop over to the Linked Open Data mailing list and ask that 
question.  I guess my close proximity to publishing and consuming Linked 
Data across the Linked Data Cloud hasn't been factored into your request 
for citations.

Nobody publishes RDF/XML solely circa. 2011. Many publish Turtle and 
N-Triples without RDF/XML.

Nobody serious Linked Data player codes for a specific representation. 
They de-reference URIs, leverage Linked Data discovery patterns, and in 
most case perform a modicum of content negotiation.

>
>>> Similarly, there needs to be working somewhere which makes HTTP and HTTPS a MUST with other schemes a MAY, but reading the spec I couldn't figure out entirely where to insert it -- I think the first couple of paras of §2.1 may need rewording to make clear the relationship between the SAN URI and the document.
>> URI abstraction is scheme agnostic. HTTP should be a suggestion. In reality, nobody is going to make an HTTP alternative as part of their WebID implementation. At the same time, implementers will support other schemes and bridge to HTTP. A mailto: or acct: scheme URI will always be a more intuitive WebID than an http: scheme URI.
> No. In reality, do this, and somebody will come along with their “WebID verification agent” which only supports their pet scheme, and claim it's perfectly in line with the specs, and the only people who will suffer will be end-users.

WebID cannot claim to be AWWW and Linked Data compliant if what you 
claim is true. As I said yesterday, WebID either conforms or it doesn't. 
There are no gray areas here.

A WebID client (e.g. a Verifier) should de-reference URIs. Use content 
negotiation and resource discovery patterns to locate resource types it 
can handle.

Please also note, the first community of call for WebID would be the 
Linked Open Data community. This community understands these matters. 
The Web 2.0 community understands resource discovery patterns via 
<head/> and <link/> relations. They typically know how to handle HTML 
and JSON. XML is seen as a relic most are veering away from.

If WebID makes the tweaks I am suggesting, it will serve Linked Data 
aficionados and Web 2.0 developers effectively, without undue 
comprehension, uptake, and political inertia.
>
> Whether the scheme is intuitive or not to write down and remember is slightly besides the point when the only time you see it is when you're publishing it and generating your certificate.

That isn't correct.

What about when you are trying to add an agent to an ACL list? Remember, 
we need to actually do something with WebID and one of the first points 
of call is WebID based applications endowed with fine-grained ACL 
capability.

Please note, more than a year ago some of us started making ACLs for the 
Read-Write Web based on WebID. Thus, WebID  intuition already has a very 
simple showcase.

>
>
>> Turtle has to be there right now. Keeping it out is also kinda contradictory. Remember, SPARQL query patterns used in WebID examples are based on Turtle. Without Turtle we wouldn't have SPARQL. Without SPARQL (albeit an implementation detail) you wouldn't have the exponentially growing Linked Open Data Cloud of today.
> It’s not 'keeping it out', but it’s not mandated.

Let's not play with words here.

Turtle should have equal standing with RDF/XML.
Microdata should have equal standing with RDFa.

If the WebID spec cannot do this, then I will tell you now, its going 
nowhere fast!

>
> With each that you mandate, though, you’re increasing the burden on implementors, and DECREASING the likelihood that people who build ordinary websites will actually bother with any of it.

No I am not. I am requesting that WebID sticks to the AWWW. There is no 
specificity in the AWWW. It allows implementers to choose their 
components. This implicit flexibility leads to self-standardization as 
you can see re. HTML, HTTP etc..

Do you think URIs, HTTP, and HTML succeeded due to specification 
mandates? Of course not. They succeeded on the back of their implicit 
merits showcased via applications.

Engineers make choices when implementing specs. Specs are not supposed 
to teach engineering.
>
> M.
>


-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	
Founder&  CEO
OpenLink Software
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