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shelleyp@b... (Shelley Powers) writes: >If you don't understand it, and don't want to take the time to >understand it, or don't feel it will buy you anything, or hate the >acronym, or you're in a general bitchy mood that's easily triggered if >someone uses "Semantic" in the same sentence that contains "Web", the >solution is simple: don't use it. Don't use it. Don't study it, look >at it, listen about it, work with it, sleep with it, or generally go >out and dance late at night with it. I have a lot of respect for certain RDF applications that appear to be working, a general lack of interest in describing the world as graphs, and a serious distaste for RDF syntax. I genuinely resent what I see as the unfortunate influence of RDF on XML's post-1.0 development and the URI-centric viewpoint it has foisted on XML. At this point I've concluded that the RDF model is lovely so long as it remains a model but not so lovely when it encounters XML. I'm not sure that using XML for RDF syntax was wise, though maybe it looked good in 1997. More to the point, though, I have a hard time avoiding RDF because it seems to have a regular and largely unpleasant impact on XML. A lot of this has been subtle but disastrous (namespaces), while some of the more overt pieces are really just aggravating. Probably the climax of that for me was Liam Quin's "daily polemic" at this year's Extreme Markup Languages: http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/papers/2002-xmlr-extreme-markup-montreal/ Fortunately, that's only a thought experiment, but it typifies to me how people working with RDF see XML and say something like "that's so messy and weak, and it needs cleaning up." I compare XML to RDF and see an organic whole that's evolved over the years standing next to a more recently designed system that can't quite sort itself out. I suppose that I do "dance late at night" with XML, and I really don't want RDF to join that dance. I've already spent a lot of nights dancing with URIs, that deeply undercooked mire of supposed identification goodness, and at this point I think I'd really like both URIs and the URI-centric vision of RDF to stay away from the party completely. If I want to dance with them, I'll call them. Since I don't, I'd much rather that they not try to slip into XML's pockets. >The RDF Working Group's efforts have been public and accessible from >the beginning. They've always been open to comments and suggestions. >There's not just one but at least three mailing lists associated with >the RDF efforts, and others associated with peripheral efforts (such >as RSS 1.0). I've never once not had any member of the working group >not respond to one of my comments. On that score I give the RDF Working Group a lot of credit for improving the W3C. They are definitely by far the most accessible (indeed friendly) group there. >I'm not a newbie with RDF so when I say that I have no problems >working with it, and would never use straight XML in any of my >applications because I find RDF to be easier to work with, you can >take this with a grain of salt. And odds are excellent that I'd never consider using RDF except in a metadata application. I'm much happier with approaches based on passing marked-up documents than in assembling models and serializing them. There's a serious divide between the two approaches. I'm very impressed by some of the people who do regularly cross between XML and RDF and that they can keep their heads straight as they do so. At the same time, I regard it pretty much like the ability to cross cultures or speak multiple languages, and I'm not convinced that XML has gained anything by the cultural encounter. RDF is powerful stuff, great for those who want to use it. Just keep it off _my_ dance floor, please. ------------- 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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