[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: A certain difficulty

• From: Arjun Ray <aray@q...>
• To: xml-dev@x..., www-rdf-interest@w...
• Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 12:31:51 -0500 (EST)

On Mon, 21 Feb 2000, Greg FitzPatrick wrote:

> Despite who or what is stupid, I guess I am not as brave as the
> kid who called the king naked, in saying that the syntax and model
> specifications are not the documents they should be

Too late!  You just did.  Bravo!:)

> if we are going to win converts to the RDF cause.

RDF concepts aren't bad at all...

> That this group of engineers made a sincere effort to implement
> RDF and failed, is saddening

The basic problem with RDF (actually the specs) is the XML part.  
This was always a how-do-we-get-there-from-here problem.  RDF has a
pretty detailed data model.  It might have sufficed - as I believe at
one point it did - to consider XML as just one possible serialization
syntax.  Most of the complications come from trying to shoehorn
everything into XML, with added "constraints" like "it's gotta work in
Netploder" - "work", of course, meaning "gets ignored".  This led to
suboptimal decisions such as redeploying the HTML-inspired idea of
sticking a URL (a resource reference) into an attribute.

Unfortunately, I don't think it can be cleaned up.  People are likely
to "get" RDF and then curse the syntax for making that process so
difficult.


Arjun
  


***************************************************************************
This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers.
To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@x...&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev
List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/threads.html
***************************************************************************

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: A certain difficulty
    • From: William Grosso <grosso@S...>

• References:
  • A certain difficulty
    • From: "Greg FitzPatrick" <gf@m...>

• Prev by Date: Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] X2X - XLink Engine
• Next by Date: SAX, OASIS, &c.
• Previous by thread: Re: A certain difficulty
• Next by thread: Re: A certain difficulty
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread