RE: Comments on history system descriptive note

Hi Rob, Team

> 3 Issues and Recommendations
> 
> Throughout section 3, I'd find it much more useful if the 
> examples were shown as RDF graphs instead of or in addition 
> to the almost impenetrable RDF/XML serialisation.

Rob recently asked me for some guidance on some documents to give him an
introduction to RDF. This reminds me I missed an important one out. As far
as I can see, very few people using RDF actually "think" in the RDF/XML
serialisation. Rather they use N3, which has been formalised as NTriples.
For an introduction to N3 see

http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/Primer.html

and for some examples see

http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/Examples

So my suggestion here would be perhaps SIMILE as a project should adopt N3
rather than RDF/XML for documentation. However this means everyone needs to
invest a small amount of time understanding it. However I think we are
better using N3 rather than graphs as once you start to deal with anything
complicated, it's impossible to make printed versions of RDF graphs
readable.  

It's a shame they didn't use "isa" instead of "a" though. What is this,
crypto-AI ? :-)

Dr Mark H. Butler
Research Scientist                HP Labs Bristol
mark-h_butler@hp.com
Internet: http://www-uk.hpl.hp.com/people/marbut/
 

Received on Thursday, 8 May 2003 06:26:49 UTC