- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2000 11:44:41 -0400 (EDT)
- To: Greg FitzPatrick <gf@medianet.org>
- cc: Pierre-Antoine CHAMPIN <pachampi@caramail.com>, Tom Van Eetvelde <tom.van_eetvelde@alcatel.be>, www-rdf-interest@w3.org, Pierre Maraninchi <penguino@caramail.com>, frankh@cs.vu.nl, Pierre Maraninchi <penguino@caramail.com>, dieter.fensel@aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de
Right. Human-legibility is not an intrinsically bad thing - it is indeed helpful. But it is one of those things where near is (other things being equal) good enough. Charles On Thu, 13 Apr 2000, Greg FitzPatrick wrote: > Charles McCN: > As I understood it, RDF was meant to be read by machines, rather than by > people. What the syntax looks like is almost irrelevant in the content of a > user interface that people are expected to use anyway. > I dont quite agree with you. We have had this up before in a short discussion during the "certain difficulty" thread. Though in one sense (for the machines in an A2A environment) it surely holds that there is no reason to have human readable code/syntax, remember that RDF development is to a large extent a consensus process. Human readable syntax is of the greatest benefit. We are constantly looking at each others examples on this list and it is quite (relatively) easy to picture what is going on. XML stipulates in 1.1 Origin and Goals. XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear. RDF M&S doesn't explicitly say this but I think it is part of the deal. Of course, what disadvantages (if any) human-legibility and consequently verbosity and bloat cause later on in the process is another matter. Greg -- Charles McCathieNevile mailto:charles@w3.org phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136 W3C Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053 Postal: GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne 3001, Australia
Received on Thursday, 13 April 2000 11:44:52 UTC