- From: Frank Boumphrey <bckman@ix.netcom.com>
- Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 02:55:03 -0500
- To: "Greg FitzPatrick" <gf@medianet.org>, <xml-dev@xml.org>, <www-rdf-interest@w3.org>
I can relate to this! As a writer who follows W3C specs quite closely ( and I am a member of a W3C working group), if i have to write on a subject it usually takes me less than a half-days reading to "get up to speed'. However the RDF spec. is particularly obtuse, and every time i have to write something on RDF my heart sinks, because i know it will take me a good 1-3 days research before i am sure i have got it right! i am sure that this is one of the major reasons that the RDF rec. has not been widely used! frank ----- Original Message ----- From: Greg FitzPatrick <gf@medianet.org> To: <xml-dev@xml.org>; <www-rdf-interest@w3.org> Sent: Monday, February 21, 2000 11:52 AM Subject: A certain difficulty > I was an invited speaker at the W3C/WAP Forum workshop on Position > Advantaged Information Systems (PAIS)at INREA last week. > > Both I, representing SKiCal, and the man representing the Open GIS > Consortium, made references to RDF representation of our respective domains. > > During the GIS talk the following was heard from the floor. > > "We (a working group of 7 technicians from the WAP FORUM Telematics Expert > Group) tried it (RDF). We tried like hell for over a week's time and we > never got it. Sure we could put some things together with nodes and arcs, > but after that we had no idea where to go. We downloaded every thing we > could find, only to become more confused." > > "XML is a cinch - but with RDF you have to make yourself a choice; Either > RDF is stupid - or you are!" > > I thought this was a pretty brave thing to say, since nobody else in the > room had dared to say (if that was the case) that they had had trouble > understanding RDF. But then assenters starting making themselves known > through out the room. > > Despite who or what is stupid, I guess I am not as brave as the kid who > called the king naked, in saying that the syntax and model specifications > are not the documents they should be if we are going to win converts to the > RDF cause. > > Perhaps they should be tightened up to the terseness of XML 1.0. Or someone > can find a good pedagogue to take care of the verbosity stuff. > > That this group of engineers made a sincere effort to implement RDF and > failed, is saddening > > Greg > > > > > > > > > > *************************************************************************** > This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers. > To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@xml.org&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev > List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/threads.html > ***************************************************************************
Received on Tuesday, 22 February 2000 02:38:11 UTC