Re: References Re: What are the requirements/problems? Re: Working on New Styles for W3C Specifications

[removing the chairs list because this gets too technical]

On 2011/12/14 10:04, Marcos Caceres wrote:

> On Wednesday, 14 December 2011 at 00:37, "Martin J. Dürst" wrote:
>>> On 2011-12-13 13:46, Marcos Caceres wrote:

>>>> Certainly, but someone has to create such a tool and provide the
>>>> references in a useable format. Last I checked, the W3C did provide
>>>> all the references in some weird and obscure format (RDF),

>> Please let's avoid such snide remarks between different groups of
>> technologies in the W3C. For some people, RDF is weird, for others, it's
>> way more natural than XML.

> I haven't touched (or encountered it) in in about 10 years, so I wouldn't know any more.

No problem. But then please don't call it weird and obscure.

>>>> though
>>>> looking at /TR/ right now, there is not even a link there anymore to
>>>> the RDF file. Much more helpful would be JSON or plain XML so it can
>>>> actually be parsed easily by off the shelf tools like Node.js and JQuery.

>> I think giving not only a specific programming language (JavaScript) as
>> a requirement, but on top of that requiring specific libraries is going
>> a bit too far.

> I think you misunderstood. I said "like" because I wanted to give those two as examples:

Ok, sorry.

> though ignoring the dominance of Javascript and JQuery seems counter productive.

For writing Web applications, very much so. With respect to tools for 
writing specs, I don't think JavaScript is at all dominant. If I have 
missed some really important recent trends that moved all spec writing 
to JavaScript, I'd appreciate some pointers.

> Regardless, seems kinda sad that the format that the specs is being delivered in is not one that is supported by Web Browsers or easy for Web developers to work with.

I haven't written any of the W3C or IETF specs that I wrote in a Web 
Browser. Given that, I don't understand why support by Web Browsers 
would be relevant. Maybe you can explain.

Also, the RDF stuff was developed by people with interest in RDF (and 
maybe even writing RDF-related specs, of which there are quite a few), 
and at a time where JSON was not the big thing it is now, if it existed 
at all. It's not that the W3C decided to have this data in RDF only and 
never produce anything else.

>> Other editors might want the same thing for Ruby on
>> Rails, Drupal, Movable Type, or what not. Or maybe you just did that to
>> provoke discussion :-).
>
>
> All those have JSON parsers:
> http://www.json.org/

I haven't found a similar list of parsers for RDF; I think the RDF 
people could learn something from JSON here.

> Do they have RDF parsers (or whatever it is RDF uses)?

>> Anyway, if you are okay to lower the requirement to just JavaScript, and
>> are ready to do a search of two, you would quickly have come up with
>> quite a few choices.

Maybe I have to repeat myself, but why don't you check yourself? Google 
(and other search engines) are your friend. Maybe you will be pleasantly 
surprised :-). When I checked, I found quite a few RDF parsers for 
JavaScript, but I haven't used any of them, so I can't recommend any one 
of them.

> Again, I used JavaScript as an example - the requirement is "lots of people can use it on the Web without special tools".

I'm still not understanding why I should write a spec "on the Web". If 
you are writing your specs "on the Web", I'd like to know how that works.

Regards,   Martin.

Received on Wednesday, 14 December 2011 10:01:37 UTC