- From: Frank Boumphrey <bckman@ix.netcom.com>
- Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 02:58:20 -0500
- To: "Mark Grossman" <msg@geocast.com>, "Greg FitzPatrick" <gf@medianet.org>
- Cc: <xml-dev@xml.org>, <www-rdf-interest@w3.org>
> I sympathize. It took me much much longer than a week to "get" RDF. I agree. I copy a note to my publisher " if you want me to write a chapter on RDF i will want double pay:>)" frank ----- Original Message ----- From: Mark Grossman <msg@geocast.com> To: Greg FitzPatrick <gf@medianet.org> Cc: <xml-dev@xml.org>; <www-rdf-interest@w3.org> Sent: Monday, February 21, 2000 4:33 PM Subject: Re: A certain difficulty > I sympathize. It took me much much longer than a week to "get" RDF. I > started at a disadvantage, having very little background in knowledge > representation and scant experience with XML. I really did think it was I who > was stupid for a while. > I ended up at an advantage, having met directly with R. Guha a couple times. > Now that I get it, I am pretty convinced it will be a useful foundation for my > company's application. And I'm relieved to discover that neither I nor RDF is > stupid -- it's just a matter of poor communication. > > Now the bad news. The specs take you only so far in learning the powers and > pitfalls. The examples floating around out there are not terribly > elucidating. And the publicly available tools are barely functional or > out-and-out broken. It would be great if there were a grad student or two out > there somewhere who could crank out an "RDF Companion", a working standalone > parser and API written in C, and and fix the typos in the spec. > > -- Mark > > Greg FitzPatrick wrote: > > > 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 > > -- > Mark Grossman > Geocast Network Systems Tel: (650)566-3259 > 190 Independence Dr. Fax: (650)566-8112 > Menlo Park, CA 94025 E-Mail: msg@geocast.com > > > > > *************************************************************************** > 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 02:41:23 UTC