Hi Ivan: Happy New Year to you too. We at Franz definitely have a very
particular need for some standardization wrt JavaScript. A customer paid
us to build a JavaScript compiler that can run in the server and because
of the lack of a standard we just came up with some random API. It
would be great if we could have a standard for both the client and
server that made some sense together. We would be more than happy to
help with the process.
Jans
On 1/11/2011 4:05 AM, Ivan Herman wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> first of all, a very happy new year to you all!
>
> The reason of this mail is some sort of an informal poll. I am not sure how closely you followed this, but there has been quite some discussion in the past few months on the necessity (or not...) of a standard RDF API for Web Application developers. In practice this means a standard API for {Java|ECMA}Script, with a particular attention to the needs and programming style of that community. In parallel to this discussion the RDFa Working Group[1] had been working on an RDFa API for a while and, in the course of this work, it became clear that it would be properly done only if a proper RDF API for Javascript is also defined. So the current thinking at W3C is that we would slightly recharter the current RDFa Working Group to publish that RDF API part as a Recommendation, too.
>
> However... that obviously raises the question of non-Javascript API-s to RDF. The reason I contact you all is because you have all been involved in some way or other with API definition and/or development for other languages, let that be C, Java, Python, PHP, or Lisp. It is not clear at this moment whether such an RDF API work, as envisaged in the RDFa Working Group, should take into account other programming languages actively from the start (ie, define something much more generic) or whether it should really concentrate on Javascript only. There are a number of issues here, including non-technical ones (the effort it would take both for the developer and the application community to migrate to a new API is the obvious and huge issue). I for myself believe that the non-technical issues are the really tough ones; my strictly _personal_ feeling at this point is that the effort in the Working group should concentrate on the needs of Javascript/Web Application only, and let other programming language communities decide whether they want to take that work into account or not. But maybe my judgement on the community's need is wrong. That is why it would be very helpful for us to get some feedback from you...
>
> Sincerely
>
> Ivan
>
> P.S. I may have missed somebody in this list. Feel free to add, in your reply, anybody else whom you think should be consulted...
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/
>
> ----
> Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
> Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
> mobile: +31-641044153
> PGP Key: http://www.ivan-herman.net/pgpkey.html
> FOAF: http://www.ivan-herman.net/foaf.rdf
>
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