James M Snell wrote:
> Bill de hÓra wrote:
> 
>>> For instance, suppose that I want to
>>> indicate that an entry is about http://www.ibm.com and file that in a
>>> category called technology?  The categorization of the entry is
>>> different than the subject of the entry.. tho both are definitely
>>> related.
>>>   
>>
>>
>> There are two distinct forms of discourse going on here
>>
>> - This entry is talking about some subject area or entity or resource.
>> It says something about something else. Being able to do this pretty
>> much why RDF was invented.
>>
>> - This entry is classifiable under some subject area or topic or class.
>> It has something has sense of belonging or association to something
>> else. Being able to do this is pretty much why Topic Maps were invented.
>>
>> Please, please, please, do not conflate these.
>>
>>  
>>
> Oh absolutely, I'm not trying to conflate 'em.  I want to find a
> solution to the first case ("this entry is talking about some subject
> area") that preferably does not involve invention or abuse of existing
> formats/tags.  I'm more than aware that RDF does this already but I not
> sure how that fact helps us in Atom (which is not RDF).

[RDF and TM were exemplary; cc'd to Henry/Danny]

Ah ok; I had read the proposal initially as subject classification
(dc:subject had me thinking that way).

If you're looking for a way to say this is entry is saying stuff about
something over there, then dc:subject and atom:category aren't a good
fit as they're more or less pointing the wrong way. rdf:about is the
closest analog in semweb land (plus it takes urls), but it's the wrong
thing here (I'll get to this).

 You could do any of the following:

 - define an atom:about tag or attribute that takes a URL.
 - use a @rel=about on a link tag

You can't use an rdf:about on the atom:entry element for this and that's
to do with entry metadata associations. What we want to say is that the
entry to talking about something else. With rdf:about the entry
*metadata* will become bound to the something else and not the entry
(which is messed up). The only sensible way I see is to work in terms of
the entry URI and the URI you're pointing at: 'entryURI isabout
someOtherURI' and define a new term for this purpose. Anyone that wants
to model this formally has enough information in the entry markup to
consistently generate the correct RDF statements out of band.

[I'm not suggesting RDF stuff for this - it's just very useful for
teasing out issues]

cheers
Bill

Reply via email to