Is this really it? (was: I18N response draft3)

Concerning:

[1]  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-rdfcore-wg/2003Sep/0259.html
[2] 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-rdfcore-wg/2003Sep/att-0259/i18n-part.html

I'd like to record my unease over the general approach of this argument 
[2], to the extent that (a) it doesn't entirely reflect what I felt was the 
WG's reason for sticking with the current design, and (b) the coverage of 
design alternatives discussed is possibly spurious or incomplete.

My apologies for not chiming in with this sooner, but the first time I read 
a draft of this text I found myself feeling uneasy and confused without any 
real focus for such feelings.

My perception is that we chose to stick with the current design because:
(a) the desire for "seamless" evolution from plain to XML literals was 
articulated very late in the day, and had not previously been part of our 
design goals,
(b) a more complete treatment of this desideratum would require extensive 
changes to many of the documents at a very late stage in the overall 
process at a time when the group really needs to complete its work quickly 
if it is to deliver value to the community,
(c) we do not feel we have been presented with a sufficiently compelling 
argument that the current design is broken in any fundamental or fatal way, and
(d) we have been trying to minimize dependence on XML of the core design of 
RDF (other than the XML serialization syntax).

The draft justification [2] dwells very much on details of specific design 
choices we might have made, which I do not feel fully captures the true 
situation.  In short, I perceive our position is:
- we really, really need to finish soon;
- the current design is not fatally flawed;
- to find an alternative acceptable design will cause a major delay.

As it stands, the draft seems to consist almost entirely of details that 
justify the final point above.

I'm not claiming that anything in Jeremy's draft [2] is wrong.  If my 
perception is not matched by others in the WG, and folks feel this really 
does fully capture the group's position, then I am content to let it stand 
(having hereby had my day in court, so to speak).

#g
--

At 15:17 26/09/03 +0300, Jeremy Carroll wrote:

>I made some minor changes, in particular dropping the very limited discussion
>I had of two designs as not worth the space.
>
>Also added link to the legacy message of earlier
>
>http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-rdfcore-wg/2003Sep/0249
>
>Jeremy

------------
Graham Klyne
GK@NineByNine.org

Received on Monday, 29 September 2003 06:09:22 UTC