Re: Alertbox: Site map usability (fwd)

On 2003-01-10, Phil Archer uttered to Gary Frederick and www-rdf-interest@w...:

>We're only just getting going but the ideas in my mind are that an
>rdf:about element might be able to include wildcards and regular
>expressions.

The trouble is, that isn't in the specs or likely to end there, soon.
Originally, PICS compatibility was supposed to be achieved via
rdf:aboutEachPrefix, but in the absence of demand, and in the face of
technical difficulties, the RDF Core working group dropped/postponed the
thing. Right now, it's in limbo, and fairly likely to stay that way for
the foreseeable future.

>This is probably sheer heresy I know, but without some sort of route
>through which one description can be applied to multiple URIs, including
>those that don't exist at the time the description is written, RDF is a
>poor replacement for PICS (which has enough problems of its own!).

One of my earlier thoughts, with this particular application in mind, was
to define a new URI type which denotes a set of resources, determined by a
regular expression match of their URI's. That would work, it wouldn't
touch the core RDF documents, it could be standardized via the normal IETF
procedure, and it would conform to the way RDF uses URI's. It would also
be far more general than rdf:aboutEachPrefix. Few would support it, true,
but it would still stay interoperable from the standpoint of current RDF,
and would facilitate the kind of use ICRA likely has in mind.
-- 
Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:decoy@iki.fi, tel:+358-50-5756111
student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front
openpgp: 050985C2/025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2

Received on Friday, 10 January 2003 19:21:32 UTC