On Fri, 7 Jan 2005 17:57:35 -0800, Roy T. Fielding <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> And it also says > > 7 Sharp-eyed readers... I was only providing an example for demonstration purposes. Broad brush strokes. > > _:entry prism:embargoDate "2005-02-15" . > > > > The embargoDate is unambiguously a property of the entry. In the RSS > > 1.0 case this is defined in the RDF model. > > No, it isn't, as is clear from the PRISM specification itself. XML > does have a built-in containment relation, which is the essence of a > mark-up language. RDF/XML does extra work to override that containment > relation for the sake of externally-defined metadata. What you ascribe > to RDF's inherent characteristics is, in fact, the opposite -- it is > XML's native characteristics that are escaped by RDF/XML. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. XML has containment. Individual specifications may assign it semantics. RDF/XML assigns it semantics corresponding to the RDF model. Without either the individual specification's definition, or a generalised interpretation like RDF/XML's all you have is syntax featuring containment. > Poorly targeted RDF mark-up will be just as vulnerable to > misinterpretation > as poorly designed XML mark-up, whereas properly designed XML mark-up is > syntactically bound through containment to the resource it refers. > E.g., > > <entry other:embargoDate="20050202">stuff to be embargoed</entry> > > XML does have a natural containment relationship that is only violated > by specific types of languages that do not actually perform mark-up, > namely RDF and its siblings. But XML containment can only express tree structures. To express graph structures, the containment must somehow be violated. RDF is a graph. (RDF/XML could probably have made a lot better use of XML's structure, but it's a bit late in the day now). While I don't see any reason not to make > XML's mark-up relations explicit in the specification, That pleases me. That's all I'm hoping for. I do hope that > folks > understand that the relationship should be obvious to anyone who does > not > work in a language that is as perversely non-mark-up as RDF/XML. Well there you have it - it is possible to design XML languages that are perverse. So we can't rely on everyone following the 'obvious' relationship pattern. Making it explicit should help prevent misinterpretation. Cheers, Danny. -- http://dannyayers.com
