- From: Frank Manola <fmanola@mitre.org>
- Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2002 08:33:55 -0500
- To: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
- CC: Brian McBride <bwm@hplb.hpl.hp.com>, RDF Core <w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org>
Dan Connolly wrote: > On Mon, 2002-11-04 at 20:24, Frank Manola wrote: > >>Brian-- >> >> >>Some comments on your comments (I'm not going to comment on all of them, >> just the ones where I either question the call, would like some more >>input, or otherwise feel like wrangling about): >> >>Section 1: >>[[If you were to allow me one silver bullet, one stylistic change you >>made just because I asked for it, it would be this one(he says not >>having read the rest of the document yet.) The first time a reader sees >>RDF they should see a graph, not RDF/XML. >> > > I wonder... > > I think a hello-world RDF/XML document on the first page is pretty > darned important. Maybe a graph right next to it is best. Good idea. This lets us emphasize the graph model right away, as well as illustrate the XML. > > >>For me, it is very important >>to get the reader thinking about graphs, not XML, right from the get >>go.]] (Brian's comments are deliminted by [[ ]] ) >> >>I understand your point. The problem is that we've just got through >>talking about how useful RDF is for expressing information so it can be >>exchanged between applications, and so on. While the model/abstract >>syntax is a graph, the only way the graph can be exchanged between >>applications is to write them down, and the normative syntax for doing >>that is RDF/XML. I really do understand that the graph is the "essence" >> of RDF; but it seems to me that at this point (where we say we're >>going to be "concrete"), we want to show folks how they're actually >>going to be writing stuff down. >> > > [...] > > >>[[This section on URI's seems like a big barrier to the reader early on. >>I'd expect a primer to introduce stuff more gradually. In style, this is >>beginning to feel more like a text book than a primer]] >> >>I understand. The problem is that: >> >>a. URIs are really fundamental; if they don't understand that, it's >>hard to make a number of subsequent points in sec. 2.3 (e.g., about >>shared references and stuff) >> > > Er... if they don't understand URIs, I think they got on > the wrong bus; they need to go learn about URIs somewhere > and come back. I'll try a major cut of this material (may not get done this week though). I still think we need to illustrate the connection between URIs and names of things, but I now have the Concepts document to point to for some details (like whether we're really using URIrefs or not; what are we calling these things again?) > > >>b. without having introduced fragments, and without having introduced >>namespaces (in the maybe-to-be-deleted XML section), it's hard to >>introduce the QName abbreviation for triples, >> > > I don't see why somebody has to understand fragments to understand > qnames; they just need to grok concatenation. > > >>which means we have to >>write them all out (and the Primer was supposed to introduce this >>abbreviation). >> >>[[Do we really need this about XML? Is a basic understanding of XML a >>requirement on the reader?]] >> >>Maybe not, and DanC complained about that too. On the other hand, it's >>only a page, >> > > ONLY a page?!?!? > > Each page is precious. If there's ANY way you can squeeze > a page out of the document without losing, say, 1/3rd > of your audience, I think you should. > > I think you're not going to lose 1/10th of your audience > by getting rid of this page of material; anybody > who doesn't know what tags and attributes are > has gotten on the wrong bus. > > >>and as I said, I need (or at least I think I do) to >>introduce the namespace stuff somewhere, and that's half of the XML >>section. What do you suggest? >> > > Just assume working knowledge of XML and namespaces. > Cite the specs and some introductory articles > if you like. > > I collected some "what you really need to know" citations > at the bottom of http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/WebOnt/ . > > e.g. * XML Tutorial 1: Well-Formed XML Documents > by Bonnie SooHoo Aug. 4, 2000 in webreview.com > Or maybe put some short material in a "minimalist survival guide" Appendix, as the DAML+OIL annotated markup did for both XML and RDF (and point to these introductory articles from there)? Maybe some of the URI material can go here too? --Frank -- Frank Manola The MITRE Corporation 202 Burlington Road, MS A345 Bedford, MA 01730-1420 mailto:fmanola@mitre.org voice: 781-271-8147 FAX: 781-271-875
Received on Tuesday, 5 November 2002 08:17:34 UTC