[wbs] response to 'GRDDL charter input, meeting at Tech Plenary'

Here are the answers submitted to 'GRDDL charter input, meeting at Tech
Plenary' (the public) for Sean Palmer.



---------------------------------
Are you interested in a meeting about GRDDL during the 2006 Tech Plenary?
----
Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages, GRDDL, is a
technique for connecting microformats and other XHTML and XML dialects
with the Semantic Web. See 
GRDDL Data Views: Getting Started, Learning More for details.

The 2006 W3C Technical Plenary and WG Meeting Week is 27 February - 03
March 2006 in Mandelieu, France.

There will probably be some microformats stuff on the plenary day on
Wednesday.

Are you interested in a meeting about GRDDL? Maybe for a couple hours on
Thursday, 2 Mar 2006, perhaps as part of a Semantic Web Interest Group
meeting?



 * [ ] Yes, I'm interested and available in a meeting at the TP some time
on Thursday, 2 March.
 * [ ] Yes, I'm interested, and I plan to be at the TP, but I have a
conflict for Thu, 2 Mar. (please suggest an alternative in a comment)
 * [x] I'm interested but not available to travel to the TP. I might be
interested to follow the meeting remotely by phone and/or IRC. I'm
interested in any outcome from such a meeting.
 * [ ] I'm not interested in a meeting.

 
I'd probably be able to follow along on IRC, but when you can only follow
F2F meetings by phone or IRC you tend to miss a lot that's going on.





---------------------------------
What is your level of interest in GRDDL?
----
Have you played with it?



 * [x] I'm convinced GRDDL is worth standardization; I'd like to
participate in a mailing list, maybe teleconferences, work on detailed
tests and examples and maybe even help polish the spec text.
 * [ ] I've used GRDDL and expect to continue using it.
 * [ ] I'm evaluating GRDDL.
 * [ ] I'm developing software that consumes GRDDL documents.
 * [ ] I'm developing microformats or dialects or formats for use with
GRDDL.
 * [ ] I'm developing content that uses GRDDL.

Comments (or a URI pointing to your comments): 
The level to which I'd be able to participate is up in the air, but
ideally I'd like to help and participate as much as I can.





---------------------------------
GRDDL issues?
----
In addition to the issues in the author's draft, do you see any issues
with the GRDDL spec? Are they part of the "minimum necessary to declare
victory"? Or are they things that would be nice but aren't critical?

Comments (or a URI pointing to your comments): 
TimBL has said that: 

"With data, generate HTML from the RDF, not the other way around."
- http://www.w3.org/2005/Talks/1110-iswc-tbl/#(2)

I very much disagree with this, and I've stated so before: 

http://chatlogs.planetrdf.com/swig/2006-01-05.html#T16-36-42

I don't think the Semantic Web can constrain itself to saying "you have to
use format X when transporting data", when format X is designed like
RDF/XML. N-Triples with, possibly, prefixes enabled and then gzipped over
the wire is likely the most efficient mechanism for transporting RDF.
Turtle is the most readable. GRDDL is the most practical. RDF/XML was out
of date almost by the time it was published, then took several more years
to "fix", and we're still debating how to make it less confusing to
developers: 

http://chatlogs.planetrdf.com/swig/2006-01-27.html#T16-25-08

So developing, standardising (carefully), and proselytising GRDDL would be
a great boon for developers--if it were to be considered a viable first
class source of RDF data. A corollary issue is that of RDF/XML becoming
the normative output format of GRDDL; indeed, I'm even adverse to its
being used in examples.

Relegating GRDDL to a secondary format and imposing RDF/XML output would
be shooting the format in the foot, and given the kinds of people who are
watching GRDDL right now, that would be very embarrassing.





---------------------------------
Should the GRDDL charter include a requirements/use-cases phase?
----
Should standardization of GRDDL begin with documentation of use cases and
requirements? Should a GRDDL working group start with explicit
story-telling to get shared vocabulary and such?

A "no" answer indicates that the use cases and requirements are clear
enough; i.e. that you would prefer to just resolve outstanding technical
issues.



 * (x) Yes
 * ( ) No
 * ( ) Concur (cast vote with the majority)
 * ( ) Blank vote

Rationale: 
Requiring two implementations at the CR stage is not enough: there should
be ten working implementations and fifteen buggy ones before a draft
reaches Last Call, for something as straightforward as GRDDL.

Use cases are the progenitors of implementations. Requirements often only
arise when implementations are worked on. When you have a proliferation of
implementations only then do you know that a format has been worthwhile.
Some formats don't even undergo proper standardisation--mbox and tab
delimited spring to mind--because people have just been using them since
forever because there was such a need.

If there isn't that kind of need for GRDDL, why are we bothering? If there
is, then generating as much early interest in implementing and using, and
producing a format by evolution (cf. N3), will hopefully precipitate a
snowball effect.

Can an evolutionary format even be developed at W3C? Its discrete
standardisation procedure doesn't seem amenable to that, but I'd like to
be proven wrong.

Comments (or a URI pointing to your comments): 





---------------------------------
Is remote work sufficient for finishing GRDDL?
----
Is remote collaboration (email, IRC, teleconferences) sufficient for
finishing GRDDL?

A "no" answer indicates that you prefer that the group have face-to-face
meetings in addition to this get-together at the Technical Plenary.


 * (x) Yes
 * ( ) No
 * ( ) Concur (cast vote with the majority)
 * ( ) Blank vote

Rationale: 
I don't think that F2F meetings should be avoided, but I think that the
bulk of the work should be conducted where there's a decent paper trail.

Comments (or a URI pointing to your comments): 



These answers were last modified on 28 January 2006 at 06:36:29 U.T.C.
by Sean Palmer

Answers to this questionnaire can be set and changed at
http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/1/grddl-cfi/ until 2006-02-02.

 Regards,

 The Automatic WBS Mailer

Received on Saturday, 28 January 2006 06:40:13 UTC