RE: Use of Triples with Newly Created XML Languages

David Booth wrote:

> I have a problem with every spec thinking that it is important 
> enough that all processors that might encounter it should have 
> built-in knowledge of how it should be processed.  Even if
> an XML language has specifically designed its own mechanisms
> for relating its constructs to triples, I would much prefer
> that the spec writers be encouraged to express those mechanisms
> using GRDDL.

Exactly.  While designing some features of particular media types so that 
they formally map to known triples, or designing the whole language in 
terms of triples may both be good things to do, the corresponding RDF can 
only be extracted if you know the particular media type.

Consider a document in a mythical media type application/noahsformat+xml. 
The spec. for application/noahsformat+xml might indeed indicate how some 
particular attribute mapped to RDF, but general purpose software is 
unlikely to know that.  If I use GRDDL to make the connection to RDF, and 
if we assume that GRDDL is widely deployed, then the chances that the RDF 
will be extractable go way up.  Simillarly, with the slight glitch 
(mentioned at the F2F I think) that the self-describing story for RDFa 
really only works if the media type registrations for HTML are updated to 
account for RDFa, that too is likely to be a widely-deployed convention 
for integrating RDF into Web content.

Noah

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Noah Mendelsohn 
IBM Corporation
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
1-617-693-4036
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Received on Friday, 15 June 2007 02:52:50 UTC