- From: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 03 May 2001 05:07:47 -0500
- To: Aaron Swartz <aswartz@upclink.com>
- CC: fmanola@mitre.org, w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org
Aaron Swartz wrote: > > Frank Manola <fmanola@mitre.org> wrote: > > > I don't think it's that simple. It seems to me that a sender may be > > transmitting RDF (i.e., this media type) for all sorts of reasons, only > > one of which is that the sender asserts the RDF content. In those cases, one option is to use application/xml or application/octet-stream or whatever. Aaron, I suggest adding something to that effect in the spec. i.e. "use of this media type means you're asserting it. If you don't mean to assert it, use some other applicable media type such as application/xml or application/octet-stream." or something like that. Also note that they can quote/reify it... > > Even for > > simple RDF content (ignoring reification, and other complications), > > couldn't the sender be forwarding RDF asserted by someone else? Or > > including it as an attachment to an email message whose text is "the > > attached is baloney"? The interpretation of RDF statements as > > assertions (and exactly who or what is doing the asserting) is certainly > > something that needs to be cleaned up, but it seems to me that a revised > > RDF M&S specification, rather than the media type definition, is > > probably the place to do it. > > We discussed this to some extent at the face-to-face. In cases such as these > I think that it's important for the RDF to be reified. Well... an attached RDF document is reified in a sense... i.e. quoted, with respect to the mail message itself. If the top-level MIME type of the mail message is RDF, then the sender asserts it. For attachments, like for RDF embedded in other XML vocabularies, the meaning of the RDF is subject to the rules of the embedding mechanism. Perhaps we should specify that attachments with Content-Disposition: inline are asserted, but Content-Disposition: attachment are not. > Humans can understand > that the statement "this is baloney" invalidates the rest of the message, > but machines don't. In RDF, if you say something, you say it. It's as simple > as that. If you don't mean to say it, then reify it. -- Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
Received on Thursday, 3 May 2001 06:08:06 UTC