Re: Semantic Web archaeology

Hi Antoine,

My recollection from the time of the WG that produced the 2004 specs is that 
rdf:Seq and friends were already defined and used, and that we didn't want to 
break existing code.

I note that the original 1999 schema spec describes itself thus: "This 
specification describes how to use RDF to describe RDF vocabularies. The 
specification also defines a basic vocabulary for this purpose, as well as an 
extensibility mechanism to anticipate future additions to RDF."

And the model and syntax thus: "This document introduces a model for 
representing RDF metadata as well as a syntax for encoding and transporting this 
metadata in a manner that maximizes the interoperability of independently 
developed Web servers and clients."

In that context, and given that this was originally the only way defined for 
representing collections, it makes sense to me that the terms were considered 
part of the model rather than vocabulary.

I do recall from those early specs that there wasn't such a clear distinction 
between model and vocabulary within RDF itself - everything was encoded as XML. 
  The notion of a formal model separate from the XML rendering didn't really 
solidify until the 2004 round - I recall there were some constructs from the 
1999 spec that had to be dropped because they didn't really have abstract-model 
representation, but were grounded in XML structures.  E.g. there was an 
"aboutEach" property that could be used to generate statements about the 
contents of a container: for this to work, the container was very much part of 
the underlying assumed model.

#g
--


On 28/06/2019 08:55, Antoine Zimmermann wrote:
> Recently on Stack Overflow, there was a question asking "Why rdf:Seq and not
> rdfs:Seq?" [1]. I tried to answer the best I could, by digging in the old RDF
> mailing lists, but I am still puzzled about how some terms ended up in the rdf:
> namespace rather than rdfs: (and vice versa). Can someone involved in the early
> days of RDF enlighten us about this?
>
> Nowadays, the duplication of namespaces for RDF terms seems rather silly,
> confusing, and counter productive. Maybe it made sense, back in the days...
>
>
> [1] morning (Stack Overflow user): Why rdf:Seq and not rdfs:Seq? Question on
> Stack Overflow, 5th June 2019.
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56468859/why-rdfseq-and-not-rdfsseq/56763523#56763523
>

Received on Friday, 28 June 2019 09:43:13 UTC