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Re: patterns vs. identifiers

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: patterns vs. identifiers
• From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
• Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 09:18:08 -0400
• In-reply-to: <3D61D2F2.2CB5D5DF@p...>

> "Simon St.Laurent" wrote:
> > 
> 
> I don't see the distinction you're making. I see RDF and the other
> semantic web technologies as fundamentally about pattern matching.
> IMHO, they exist primarily to help programs pattern match.

And that's what makes those technologies useless for most people.
Humans can pattern match on what they see in front of them, only, for
the most part - precise access to memory is a limited commodity.
Embedded markup works with human limitations wonderfully.  

Computers have different capabilities - while they tend to "see" a
narrower slice at any given moment, they can keep track of tables and
tables and tables of stuff.  That's where identifiers are useful - for
computers. 

Building systems which rely on abstract identifiers works very well for
computers and very poorly for most people.  People's ability to follow
identifiers scales very poorly when the identifiers are not immediately
next to each other.

RDF doesn't lack pattern matching - it just uses identifiers to create
pattern matching in a way that's grossly incompatible with most prosaic
non-programmer human thought.

To put it another more amusing way, RDF is inhuman.  XML at least tries
to balance human and computer approaches to information.  Then
Namespaces in XML came along - oh, the humanity!

But like I said, I don't expect people who enjoy identifiers to
understand what a mess they've created for people who prefer explicit
patterns (markup).


-------------
Simon St.Laurent - SSL is my TLA
http://simonstl.com may be my URI
http://monasticxml.org may be my ascetic URI
urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.6320 is another possibility altogether

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    • From: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>

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