Re: (tentative) container model proposal

On Tue, 12 Jun 2001, Aaron Swartz wrote:

> Graham Klyne <Graham.Klyne@Baltimore.com> wrote:
>
> > Moving containers out of the core works for me.  I think it's far from
> > clear that the specified way of representing collections is always the
> > best, and (history aside) don't see why it should have such distinguished
> > status.
>
> I'd love to move containers out of the core, but I just don't believe it's
> feasible because of the special interpretation of the rdf:li element. Which
> is really too bad, because I'd love to massively simplify the core.  [...]

I suspect we tend to talk past ourselves a little, with phrases such as
"move out of the core", "distinguished status" etc. We have various things
"in the core" in the sense of being specified in one of the specs owned by
the RDF Core WG. Beyond that, we have not really defined a more precise
technical sense of "being in the rdf core".

There is, with rdf containers, a sense in which they have to date been
privileged, distinguished etc over and above merely being defined by an
RDF Core WG specification: containers get a special mention in the 'rdf
formal model' part of the spec. We might say they are 'architecturally
privileged' in the RDF model specification. The proposal I am writing up
this week is to remove this; we can nevertheless leave container-specific
constructs in the syntax.

Containers are also, as you point out, syntactically privileged in the RDF
syntax specification. But then, so is the rdf:type construct: we can write
<wn:Person foaf:name="dan"/> instead of a more verbose piece of XML,
because the RDF syntax provides sugar for common idioms. The container
machinery in the syntax is in the same category...

Dan

Received on Tuesday, 12 June 2001 11:06:21 UTC