On 10 Jul 2009, at 10:56, Richard Light wrote:
In message <[email protected]>, Steve
Harris <[email protected]> writes
On 10 Jul 2009, at 01:22, Hugh Glaser wrote:
If I can't simply publish some RDF about something like my dog, by
publishing a file of triples that say what I want at my standard
web site,
we have broken the system.
I couldn't agree more.
<rant subject="off-topic syntax rant of the decade">
Personally I think that RDF/XML doesn't help, it's too hard to
write by hand. None of the other syntaxes for RDF triples really
have the stamp of legitimacy. I think that's something that could
really help adoption, the the same way that strict XHTML, in the
early 1990's wouldn't have been so popular with people (like me)
who just wanted to bash out some text in vi.
</>
Well, in my view, when we get to "bashing out" triples it isn't the
holding syntax which will be the main challenge, it's the Linked
Data URLs. Obviously, in a Linked Data resource about your dog, you
can invent the URL for the subject of your triples, but if your Data
is to be Linked in any meaningful way, you also need URLs for their
predicates and objects.
This implies that, without a sort of Semantic FrontPage (TM) with
powerful and user-friendly lookup facilities, no-one is going to
bash out usable Linked Data. Certainly not with vi. And if you
have such authoring software, the easiest part of its job will be
rendering your statements into as many syntaxes as you want.
I think that's a fallacy. I the web wasn't bootstrapped by people
wielding Frontpage*. It was people like Hugh and I, churning out HTML
by hand (or shell script often), mostly by “cargo cult” copying
existing HTML we found on the Web. That neatly sidesteps the schema
question, as people will just use whatever other people use, warts,
typos, and all.
The tools for non-geeks phase comes along much later, IMHO. First we
have to make an environment interesting enough for non-geeks to want
to play in.
Happy to be demonstrated wrong of course.
- Steve
* Frontpage wasn't released until late '95, and wasn't widely known
until late '96 when it was bought by MS. By which time the Web was a
done deal.
--
Steve Harris
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