Re: A Rough Guide to Notation3

Dave Beckett wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> Blame XML for XML's efficiency, not applications of it.  

XML chose human readability over efficiency. Doesn't it seem kind of odd
to build something unreadable on top of something inefficient so that
you combine the worst of both worlds?

>...
> Apologies to N3 for that ;)

I find N3 reasonably easy to read.

> ...
> So how about protocols for machines such as email, HTTP which are not
> machine-optimized binary?  

Those protocols are *very* human readable and are read by humans
(programmers, administrators and sometimes system administrators) every
day.

> ... That was a major reason the Internet and
> Web won over earlier systems.  Such as those built with ASN.1 for
> "efficiency" although having no "readability".  Promoting that is
> going backwards.

I agree. That's why I think it is strange to say that RDF/XML is "not
designed for human consumption." It would be a terrible mistake to
create a web standard in 2002 and not design for human consumption.
Making it ALSO inefficient would compound the mistake.
-- 
 Paul Prescod

Received on Friday, 23 August 2002 15:42:01 UTC