Re: .htaccess a major bottleneck to Semantic Web adoption / Was: Re: RDFa vs RDF/XML and content negotiation

On Jun 26, 2009, at 3:03 AM, Toby A Inkster wrote:

> On 25 Jun 2009, at 21:18, Pat Hayes wrote:
>
>> If [RDF] requires people to tinker with files with names starting  
>> with a dot [...] then the entire SWeb architecture is fundamentally  
>> broken.
>
> RDF doesn't. Apache does.

I should have said, if the process of getting RDF published requires  
people...

Pat

>
> Many hosts do have front ends for configuring Apache, allowing  
> redirects to be set up and content-types configured by filling in  
> simple web forms. But there are such a variety of these tools with  
> different capabilities and different interfaces that it would be  
> difficult to produce advice suitable for them all, so instead  
> ".htaccess" recipes are provided instead.
>
> That said, there are a couple of steps that Martin could remove from  
> his recipe and still be promoting reasonably good practice:
>
> Step 5a - this rewrites <http://example.org/semanticweb> to <http://example.org/semanticweb.rdf 
> >. Other than aesthetics, there's no real reason to do this. Yes,  
> I've read timbl's old Cool URIs document, and understand about not  
> wanting to include hints of file format in a URI. But realistically,  
> this file is going to always include some RDF - perhaps in a non-RDF/ 
> XML serialisation, but I don't see anything inappropriate about  
> serving other RDF serialisations using a ".rdf" URL, provided the  
> correct MIME type is used.
>
> Step 5b - the default Apache mime.types file knows about application/ 
> rdf+xml, so this should be unnecessary. Perhaps instead have a  
> GoodRelations "validator" which checks that the content type is  
> correct, and only suggests this when it is found to be otherwise.
>
> Steps 3 and 4 could be amalgamated into a single "validate your RDF  
> file" step using the aforementioned validator. The validator would  
> be written so that, upon a successful validation, it offers single- 
> click options to ping semweb search engines, and Yahoo (via a RDF/ 
> XML->DataRSS converter).
>
> With those adjustments, the recipe would just be:
>
> 	1. Upload your RDF file.
> 	2. Add a rel="meta" link to it.
> 	3. Validate using our helpful tool.
>
> -- 
> Toby A Inkster
> <mailto:mail@tobyinkster.co.uk>
> <http://tobyinkster.co.uk>
>
>
>
>
>

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Received on Friday, 26 June 2009 13:44:35 UTC