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Re: RDF syntax

• To: XML Developers List <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: RDF syntax
• From: David Megginson <dmeggin@a...>
• Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 17:03:20 -0500
• In-reply-to: <1067808999.5888.120.camel@delleric>
• References: <r02000200-1028-881B3A580D7B11D8A92B0003937A08C2@[192.168.124.11]><1067808999.5888.120.camel@delleric>
• Sender: David Megginson <dmeggin@a...>

Eric van der Vlist writes:

 > But each RDF application can choose to be also a XML application
 > and define which variations are accepted through documentation and
 > eventually schemas as we've done for RSS 1.0.
 > 
 > In that case, the number of variations are just more possibilities
 > for the designers of the application which I think is an advantage
 > rather than an issue.

Unfortunately, with n>1 RDF syntactic variants rather than one, it's
much less likely that RDF can jump over the barrier into any kind of
serious network effect.  We already tried that with SGML and the SGML
declaration.

RDF's flexible syntax is well-designed for embedding in Web pages, but
unfortunately, it turns out that almost no one wants to do that.  The
syntax is also well-designed for fitting into other types of XML
markup, but it turns out that almost no one wants to do that, either.

As a result, it might be fair to conclude that RDF's syntactic
flexibility was a kind of premature optimization, a lot of work to
accomodate premature requirements.


All the best,


David

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