Re: RDF Issue: mime-types-for-rdf-docs

Aaron,

----- Original Message -----
From: "Aaron Swartz" <me@aaronsw.com>
To: "Garret Wilson" <garret@globalmentor.com>; "Brian McBride"
<bwm@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
Cc: "Andy Powell" <a.powell@ukoln.ac.uk>; <www-rdf-comments@w3.org>
Sent: Friday, April 12, 2002 9:39 AM
Subject: Re: RDF Issue: mime-types-for-rdf-docs


> On 2002-04-08 07:43 AM, "Garret Wilson" <garret@globalmentor.com> wrote:
>
> > Has there been any thought of making a
> > similar recommendation ("application/...+rdf+xml") for specific
> > applications of RDF? For instance, this would
> > allow "application/pics+rdf+xml", "application/xpackage+rdf+xml",
> > and "application/annotea+rdf+xml".
>
> Hi Garret. I initially thought this would be useful but soon changed my
mind
> because:
>
> A) there was apparently a lot of resistance to +xml, and friends in the
IETF
> thought that out chances of getting +rdf+xml were pretty slim

The whole MIME type thing is starting to be a hack, anyway, because a "type"
of media is currently so ambiguous. Even "application/rdf+xml" tries to say
that this is "information to be processed by an application" (but what
isn't?), that it's serialized in XML, and that it uses the RDF framework.
What's really needed is some RDF-based type mechanism that indicates maybe
<mime:serialization>xml</mime:serialization>, <mime:framework>rdf</mime>,
etc.

While I think "+xml" is a hack in the first place, if that's accepted then
"+rdf+xml" naturally follows.

> B part 2) subsets of RDF/XML with syntax restrictions (like RSS 1.0)
aren't
> really RDF and should get their own +xml mime type like rss+xml.

Wow, I had never heard of RSS (to my knowledge), but there are a *lot* of
similarities with XPackage ( www.xpackage.org ) --- perhaps we could discuss
this separately offline, or on the www-xml-packaging list.

Saying that RSS or XPackage is not really RDF, though, seems to be like
saying that RDF isn't really XML. I'm not sure I agree.

Garret

Received on Saturday, 13 April 2002 12:20:18 UTC