Re: RDF in XHTML

Seth Russell wrote:
> 
> From: "Murray Altheim" <altheim@eng.sun.com>
> 
> > Seth Russell wrote:
> > >
> > > Boy, I hope we don't solve this problem only for DC and think we have
> > > accomplished anything.
> >
> > You can take that attitude toward the work if you like.
> 
> Perhaps If you were as interested in seeing  detailed RDF descriptions of
> pages as I am, you would understand my frustration with being thrown a bone
> ... a narrowly scoped fixed schema.

I've never offered to solve world hunger, even for RDF flesh. I don't know
how to solve that one. The *only* way I can imagine (that wouldn't involve
an act of Congress) would be to have CDATA section nodes containing RDF be 
notation-marked as RDF, such that they get passed off to an RDF schema
processor for *appropriate* processing. This isn't technically all that
difficult, but it's religiously and politically unlikely. IMO.
 
[...]
> Sure there's value in it, but at the same time there are a lot of people
> that want to say much more about their pages than is possible with the DC
> set of descriptions.   I want to be able to find a needle in a heystack and
> that means very targeted meta data descriptions of resources.

Why do you need to have the RDF be *in* the XHTML file? Honestly, without
trying to sell you an XTM solution, this is precisely what XTM is good
for: mapping resources within XML files. I'm currently working with the
bootstrap.org people on ideas surrounding the Online Hyperdocument System,
with a fairly quick program I hope to donate called "plink", which takes
any XHTML (and eventually XML) file and adds link targets to significant
elements. If you look at the bootstrap.org site you'll see little purple
links after every heading and paragraph ("purple link" == "plink"). This
will enable any XHTML document to be easily mapped. I hope to follow this
up with an auto-generated XTM topic map feature, mapping the *structure*
of the document (to be augmented by author-supplied semantics, etc.)
 
> > I have little belief that a general RDF-in-XHTML solution is necessary
> > or even a good idea, and the discussions I've heard here have not
> > convinced me otherwise.
> 
> Well, yes, now I agree ... because of the validation problem is is not a
> good solution.

Unless someone is willing to come up with something akin to the idea I
mentioned up above.
 
> >This would not be useful. External links to RDF is
> > the only other way, which is certainly possible but less than optimal.
> 
> What's wrong with it?   Can you propose a different solution that will
> permit the validation you need of the XHTML document and at the same time
> permit people to use the full power of RDF to describe their resources ?

As has been mentioned in other threads and by other people, creating 
external documents means more document management, less document portability,
the likelihood of metadata-document mismatch, etc. People already spend too
much time managing (or not managing) their document sets. I'd hate to add
to their burden.

Murray

...........................................................................
Murray Altheim, SGML/XML Grease Monkey     <mailto:altheim&#64;eng.sun.com>
XML Technology Center
Sun Microsystems, 1601 Willow Rd., MS UMPK17-102, Menlo Park, CA 94025

      the wood louse sits on a splinter and sings to the rising sap
      ain't it awful how winter lingers in springtimes lap -- archy

Received on Tuesday, 17 April 2001 18:24:49 UTC