Netscape RDF files

[Ron Daniel]

Guha sez:
There have been a number of questions about Netscape
RDF files, most notably http://home.netscape.com/netcenter.rdf.
Here are some comments in that regard.

 Though the files are technically valid RDF as per 
the February public draft of the RDF spec, I have to 
admit that they do miss the "spirit" of RDF and need
improvement. 

[...]

I'm glad to hear that you agree that
they should be made closer in spirit to the RDF spec.

The (elided) points about namespaces and Dublin core were my
major concerns, so I'm glad that you also consider those to
be easy fixes.

In addition, there has been some criticism of these
files using the RDF abbreviation. In this regard,
I must defend these files --- I strongly believe
that the RDF abbreviation is a good thing. However,
if there are aspects of the abbreviation that make
them hard to read, I (and the rdf wg) would like
to know so that we can fix it.

After a little practical experience 
last week with the full vs. the abbreviated form,
I agree with Guha that the abbreviated syntax is
"A Good Thing"TM.

This is not to say that it is
easy to read or write directly until you have had some
practice. However, at least in the cases we looked
at last week, it ended up being fairly close in
appearance to things that had been specified using
a custom DTD (modulo the namespace prefixes). This
makes the acceptance of RDF far more palatable than
it would be with the unabbreviated syntax.

Regards,
Ron Daniel Jr.
DATAFUSION, Inc.
139 Townsend Street, Ste. 100
San Francisco, CA  94107
415.222.0100 fax 415.222.0150 
rdaniel at datafusion.net
http://www.datafusion.net

   


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