Some questions

[Joe Lapp]

At 03:46 PM 12/1/99 -0800, Tim Bray wrote:
>Because the same data structures and usage patterns keep coming back across
>wide ranges of metadata applications, even though the world isn't about
>to agree on common vocabularies.  So there are huge gains to be had from
>a common data model and transfer syntax. -Tim

That's a very strong motivation.  But we have to balance that with another
very strong motivation: making the documents easy to understand by the
people who need to work with them.  By designing your own doctype you can
tailor the structure and the language to suit the target audience.

RDF may be simple at heart, but is it reasonable to ask the average user to
figure it out, to expect that the average user of metadata will even be
able to grok the abstractions?  I may be reiterating your earlier
sentiment, but I worry that the abstractions are as much an impediment as
the spec and the syntax.

--
Joe Lapp                     (Looking for some good people to
Senior Engineer               help create XML technologies that
http://www.webMethods.com     connect businesses to businesses
jlapp at webMethods.com          over the web.)

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