- From: Jeremy Carroll <jeremy@topquadrant.com>
- Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:55:06 -0800
- To: Harry Halpin <hhalpin@ibiblio.org>
- CC: Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>, Kjetil Kjernsmo <kjetil@kjernsmo.net>, semantic-web@w3.org
In line question ... Harry Halpin wrote: > > > No, but the spec should allow a competent Python/C/Ruby/etc. > programmer to read it and understand RDF, and the implement compliant > software. Essentially, specs should, IMHO, be aimed at implementers, > while the tutorial stuff can be aimed at users and of course does not > need to spec. > > I am noticing that while the current RDF specs are very thorough, and > the editors deserve lots of credit for that, they should be > simplified. Harry, with the RDF specs I think we had this aim in mind. Please enlighten me as to where we failed. My take is that: RDF Concepts - tells you the basic data structure, with clarity to design the API into the data structure for your programming environment RDF Syntax - tells you how to take an XML document and populate above data structure RDF Vocab - gives you some vocab I think this desire to simplify might mean to leave out some of the detail. This was the mistake we were trying to avoid. A spec is like a computer program, if it doesn't have the detail then you get a nasty mess when someone tries to run that part of it. We perhaps were too reluctant to undo the work of the first RDF WG, by explicitly marking rdf:Alt as bad. I think it is left to the reader to interpret certain phrases like: [[ The intended mode of use is that things of type |rdf:Bag| are considered to be unordered but to allow duplicates; things of type |rdf:Seq| are considered to be ordered, and things of type |rdf:Alt| are considered to represent a collection of alternatives, possibly with a preference ordering. The ordering of items in an ordered container is intended to be indicated by the numerical ordering of the container membership properties, which are assumed to be single-valued. However, these informal interpretations are not reflected in any formal RDF entailments. ]] and [[ Whilst formally it is no different from an |rdf:Seq <http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-schema-20040210/#ch_seq>| or an |rdf:Bag <http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-schema-20040210/#ch_bag>|, the |rdf:Alt| class is used conventionally to indicate to a human reader that typical processing will be to select one of the members of the container. ]] which actually do a pretty good job of making out that Alt is useful. I note that RDF Semantics is aimed at a somewhat ambitious programmer. I think that is unavoidable. I also think Pat did an amazing job at making that have a wider possible audience than it might have done. > For example, I know of implementers that go off and use > rdf:Alt and reification, and because they arent on swig etc., they > have no idea this is "bad practice". This common knowledge should be > noted in the specs. > > The Semantic Web, unlike most other Web standards, is basically a > research project - and a far-sighted and correct one it seems! - > disguised as a standardization project, and so its not surprising that > after a number of years, some concrete lessons have been learned. I > see no reason to aim them at the spec. > This amused me! > Most informal specs nowdays (see say, opensocial) go through a rapid > evolution and feedback from developers phase, something that the "make > spec once and never update" policy doesnt work to well with. There is > probably a golden mean somewhere, where we can make and should make > incremental updates to most specs every 5 or so years if they are > still being used. > > > Jeremy
Received on Wednesday, 20 January 2010 06:56:37 UTC