Re: RDF Calendar - Short review

On Thu, 2005-09-29 at 15:52 -0400, Karl Dubost wrote:
> Dan, Libby,
> 
> 
> First of all, congratulations for this useful W3C Note on Calendaring  
> in RDF and for the Web.

Thanks!


> My comments when reading the document.
> 
> 
> * Reading the document
>      Sometimes the document is a bit difficult to understand in its  
> organization. [...]
> You might find a template which suits for your document.

Hmm... I can imagine ways to make the document easier to read,
but constraining the sections to be more uniform doesn't seem
like it will help.


> * Links through the text
>      If someone prints the text, all links reference will be lost.  

I think that's a problem with common HTML printing software,
not with this document.

Engelbart pointed out in 1990 that this is an essential element
of an open hyperdocument system:

Hard-Copy Print Options to Show Addresses of Objects and Address
Specification of Links --so that, besides online workers being able to
follow a link-citation path (manually, or via an automatic link jump),
people working with associated hard copy can read and interpret the
link-citation, and follow the indicated path to the cited object in the
designated hard-copy document.
http://www.bootstrap.org/augdocs/augment-132082.htm#11L


> You might want to add [LINK-REF] through the text. OR give a  
> printable version of your document with explicit references.

There's a references section at the end.

> * link
> [[[
> The resulting RDF/XML analogs served useful purposes to at least some  
> of the participants and seemed to be correct, by inspection, to all  
> present. This provided critical mass to begin maintaining a test suite
> ]]] - http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/NOTE-rdfcal-20050929/#intro
> 
> => I would have added a link to the test suite.

There's a whole section on the test suite later in the document
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/NOTE-rdfcal-20050929/#testdr
it includes a link to the test suite.

Maybe a forward reference would help, but it's not obvious
to me how to phrase it.


> * typo
> [[[
> Email offers the chance to read and compse at your own pace, but the  
> the timezone gaps between America, Europe, and Asia effective impose  
> a 24 hour round-trip time that is a real barrier to conversation.
> ]]] - http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/NOTE-rdfcal-20050929/#Collaborat
> 
> => s/the the/the/

oops.

> => I'm not sure of English correctness for "effective impose"

it should be "effectively"


> * Examples markup and style.
>      I found the CSS style of examples a bit rough. If you want I  
> could propose you a style, but I wanted to be sure that you were open  
> to a suggestion.

Feel free to play around with
  http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/report1173.html
and commit any changes that you're reasonably confident are
improvements.


> * 3. A simple example
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/NOTE-rdfcal-20050929/#exsim
> 
> I would add a bit more context for your simple example. Tell a story  
> even in one very small paragraph, ala  @@I was planning to attend  
> the  scooby conference, so with calendaring application …@@
>      A reader will understand even more.

But the point of that example has nothing to do with the scooby
conference; the point of that section is to show the structure
of iCalendar components/properties and show how that structure
is similar to RDF class/property structure.

Perhaps this example should be changed so that it fits
with the shop hours example better. If we do that, it'll make
more sense to tell a story.


> * Example not closed.
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/NOTE-rdfcal-20050929/#ns-gnd
> 
>      I know it might seem bizarre, but I have always a tendency to  
> shock on not well formed examples ;) could you close the RDF?

I suppose.


> * "footnotes"
> 
>      I didn't find obvious the understanding of footnotes in your  
> document.

No? if you recognized them as footnotes, then you understood.

>  Maybe it's a question of layout, maybe a question of topic  
> marker.


> * Notation 3 rules syntax
> 
> [[[
> We explored using rules to generate a schema from our example data.  
> Rules such as "if something is related to semething else by ?P, then ? 
> P is a Property" and "if something is a ?C, then ?C is a Class" can  
> be expressed in Notation3 rule syntax:
> ]]] - http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/NOTE-rdfcal-20050929/#Generating
> 
>      => When I follow the link to Notation 3, I found a document  
> which is hard to read and not very explicit to understand what is the  
> notion of rules in Notation 3. I would give a link to another  
> document clearly explaining how does it work with examples.

In Notation3.html, it was too hard to find the link to a tutorial?

"Resources on Notation3 include the following:

      * A primer for getting into RDF using N3
      * A tutorial on treating Semantic Web data, taught using N3"

>  If such a  
> document doesn't exist, it might be an opportunity to create it.
> 
> 
> * 9. Quote from another specification
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/NOTE-rdfcal-20050929/#Generating
> 
> You give an excerpt from icalendar specification, give a link to the  
> appropriate part. Put the "pre" element in a blockquote with the  
> appropriate cite attribute.

Yes, should do that.


> * Table of test references
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/NOTE-rdfcal-20050929/#testdr
> 
> In this section, there's a big table with name of files. I'm not sure  
> that the table is useful as it is for the user or implementers. It's  
> a bit like URI in your face.

I would have liked to take the .rdf off and make the test names
into links, as well as the iCalendar Component, Property,
and Value Types. I ran out of time.

> Is there a list describing each test with the minimum metadata

I don't think so.

>      See http://www.w3.org/TR/test-metadata
> 
> Maybe, In the last column of the table,  make list with a short  
> abstract of the test and a link to the real file.
> 
> 
> * hcalendar
> Maybe unrelated to this document
>      <abbr class="dtstart" title="2005-10-05">October 5</abbr>
> Do you know what people from WAI thinks about the title which is less  
> readable than the abbr. Will it be a problem with screen reader?

As we said, their approach is "interesting". It's very handy in 
some ways, but yes, it perhaps abuses the markup. This does
seem to be explicitly mentioned among hcalendar issues:

[[
The use of  for dates is incorrect. "August 5th, 2004" is not the
abbreviation of 2004-09-05. In fact, the opposite is closer to the
truth. 
      * REJECTED (false statement). This is simply a false statement.
        See this article for an explanation of this use of <abbr>: Human
        vs. ISO8601 dates problem solved
]]
 -- http://microformats.org/wiki/hcalendar-issues


-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
D3C2 887B 0F92 6005 C541  0875 0F91 96DE 6E52 C29E

Received on Thursday, 29 September 2005 20:34:50 UTC