Re: RDF syntax history - Ralph Swick quote on design constraint

JSON-LD actually allows you chose between the two: you can always copy 
the entire context into your data, to make it as self-sufficient as an 
RDF/XML or Turtle file.

On 22/06/2021 15:26, Dan Brickley wrote:
>
> I knew Ralph had said this, but only just stumbled across where he 
> wrote it down.
>
> It was when Netscape submitted the XML-ified version of Guha's MCF to 
> W3C, June 1997. This work was picked up by the RDF Model and Syntax 
> WG.  To put this in context, this was before the XML spec was itself 
> finalized.
>
> https://www.w3.org/Submission/1997/8/Comment.html 
> <https://www.w3.org/Submission/1997/8/Comment.html>
>
> "An important requirement on the metadata framework is that parsers 
> must be able to produce a parse tree of the metadata without the 
> assistance of an auxiliary format description. This corresponds to the 
> XML /well-formed/criterion"
>
> I share this since various of us have been banging on about this 
> design issue on the Signed LD thread, w.r.t. JSON-LD Contexts.
>
> RDF/XML took the verbose path, such that knowing only the bytes in the 
> file + base URI, you could get the same triples out, with no extra 
> info. It's neither better nor worse than other approaches, but it is a 
> distinctive design constraint and I'm glad I found it written down 
> somewhere, finally. Turtle, Ntriples, also work the same way; GRDDL, 
> CSVW RDF mappings don't, as they require multiple files before you 
> know what triples you'll get.
>
> Dan