Re: Media types and assertions

On Thu, Mar 11, 2004 at 09:43:08PM -0600, Pat Hayes wrote:
> >As it would be if it were transferred with text/plain or
> >application/octet-stream.
> 
> Not at all. Unless you know it is RDF, you don't even have a chance 
> of getting at the content. Conveying it as text/plain doesn't even 
> tell you how to parse the logical form.

Ah, I see.  By "content" I thought you meant the bytes.

> >The Web is concerned with more than content, it's concerned with being
> >able to serialize up meaning at one end of the pipe, and have it
> >accurately reconstituted at the other end.  The media type tells us what
> >spec to use to extract meaning from the document encapsulated in a Web
> >message, and so is arguably the most important piece of metadata used in
> >this process.
> 
> Ok, no argument with that. That's why one needs an RDF media type, to 
> inform the engines that this is RDF rather than plain XML or plain 
> text.

Right.

>  But all that is basically about what syntax level to parse it 
> at, so one can get at the semantics. Asserted or not asserted, it is 
> still RDF rather than plain text.

Agreed.

So in those terms, I claim that whether or not an RDF document is
asserted is something the publisher of that document needs to make
clear via the messages they send.  The RDF specs don't help you with
that, therefore, IMO, the media type registration(s) should.

But my requirement (for my needs, at work) is simply that the
"assertedness" of a document be indicated somewhere in the message.
And though I believe the media type is the right way to do this, I'm
open to any other solution which meets that requirement.

Cheers,

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca

Received on Thursday, 11 March 2004 23:42:02 UTC