Re: [OT] Re: No new mime types

[offline]

On 7/11/06, Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net> wrote:
> On 11 Jul 2006, at 16:22, Bill de hÓra wrote:
> > Henry,
> >
> > http://www.openhealth.org/WOWG/owl-mediatype.html:
> >
> > "An OWL document may be served with the application/rdf+xml media
> > type in which case the document is interpreted according to the
> > application/rdf+xml media type[3] registration."
>
> This is not what the spec itself says:
> http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-ref/#MIMEType
>
> [[
> The Web Ontology Working Group has not requested a separate MIME type
> for OWL documents. Instead, we recommend to use the MIME type
> requested by the RDF Core Working Group, namely application/rdf+xml
> [RDF Concepts], or alternatively the XML MIME type application/xml.
> As file extension, we recommend to use either .rdf or .owl.
>
> ]]
>
>
> In my opinion it seems a little odd that a mime type should be able
> to determine what conclusions the interpreting software can come to.

It doesn't, it just aids in prescribing the meaning of the message.

If the sender of the message intends the message to communicate
inferred triples, then that needs to be indicated in the message
itself and an inference-specific media type would be appropriate.
Otherwise they're not communicating it because nothing in the RDF/XML
spec licenses inference meaning that existing RDF/XML processors
wouldn't extract the inferred triples from the message.

It's all about intent.  See the example here;

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2003JulSep/0342.html

FWIW, the Sem Web specs should have either;

a) minted a new media type that assumed inference, or
b) explained that inference isn't implied by the rdf+xml media type,
and therefore that inferred triples need to be explicitly included in
the RDF/XML document if the message sender intends to communicate
them.

Unfortunately they did neither.  Once RDFS comes to be commonly
exchanged, this problem will be discovered and the easiest fix will
likely be a new media type.

Mark.

Received on Tuesday, 11 July 2006 16:13:31 UTC