Re: RDF/XML Syntax Specification (Revised) W3C Working Draft published

> >   - it is not used

we do....

> >   - it is not widely implemented

you're sure? 

> >   - it has confusing interactions with rdf:bagID
> >   - it does not scale as parsers have to save state
> >   - this is the wrong layer in which to implemenent such functionality

which layer is better in the view of rdf-core?
> >
> > The background to this will be recorded at
> >   http://www.w3.org/2000/03/rdf-tracking/#rdfms-abouteach
> > in due course, but you might also want to look at
> >   http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-rdf-syntax-
> > grammar-20011218/#rdfms-abouteach
> > for pointers.
> >
> 
> My main concern with this is what to use instead. As I mentioned 
> previously, I'm currently defining an internal standard, or template, 
> for inline metadata. This metadata will be partially manually generated, 
> and so shouldn't be unnecessarily verbose. A little syntactic sugar 
> would be handy.
> 
> I'm not tied to aboutEach, since there is no prior use. I am looking for 
> best practice here, so as to start off in the best way. I could quite 
> easily do a little XSLT preprocessing to convert uses of aboutEach to 
> another form, but it

are you sure you can do in all cases? 

> seems silly to do this, if an alternative exists.
> 
> To widen this a little: how is is RDF to be used by people who have 
> domain knowledge, but little RDF experience, and do not wish to write 
> screeds of repeated verbose data?
> 
> I am quite keen on using RDF for `proper' knowledge representation, but, 
> to be honest, the average user runs to the hills when they see a 
> slightly non-trivial usage of RDF (especially as RDF/XML). Is RDF even 
> *meant* to be manually generated? If so, it seems natural to those of us 
> coming from a programming background that it should support minimisation 
> of input, where shared properties exist eg if Tom has properties A, B 
> and C, while Jane has properties C, F, and A, it is automatic to group 
> the shared properties together and mention them first, then go onto the 
> differences. This syntax does not have to be reflected in the model, it 
> is merely a short-hand, but a very valuable short-hand.
> 
> I'm an RDF newbie, so I may be missing some things, but it seems this is 
> an issue if RDF is be a human-writable language.
> 
> --
> Mike
> 
>

Received on Wednesday, 19 December 2001 08:26:16 UTC