Re: Is promoting RDF+XML a lost cause?

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004, Giovanni Tummarello wrote:

>it is *looking* at the XML in the RDF/XML serialization that can be
>considered a lost cause. People should'nt  look directly at it.
>Its like if when the JPEG format was invented instead people said its a
>lost cause since if you look at it with a hex viewer you dont see much
>.. and we should all use ascii art instead.
>
>people shouldnt be made to approach RDF in a way so tangled with XML as it is
>in the RDF primer.

>It's the model and the semantics that matter and make rdf more powerful and actually simple
>It's a graph .. so no textual serialization will ever make it clear?

I agree 100%. In order to mess around at the bleeding edge I have had to
learn every new syntax designed because someone wanted different-looking
stuff.

And none of them is lovely. N3 is OK until you try to use the millions of
shortcuts. RDF/XML is ok until a document gets to be a few hundred lines.
Viewing a naive graph like IsaViz/GraphViz is ok when it has less than about
a dozen nodes, or 4 dozen if I can drag them around myself to clean it up.

But I don't actually think in syntax, I think in terms of the model,
when I can I author with a graphical tool (when my Mac works I use RDF
Author), and I really don't see the value in syntax discussions.

On the other hand I am happy to use rdf:datatype despite having lots of
characters to copy/paste - since copy/paste is something that is almost
a reflex.

My experience is that many developers don't care about the syntax - they just
want to know what is THE styntax, and be able to interoperate with it.

Cheers

Chaals

Received on Wednesday, 24 November 2004 12:39:57 UTC