[doap-interest] Linking back to DOAP projects from an RSS feed?

Bill Kearney wkearney at syndic8.com
Fri Nov 12 14:21:08 GMT 2004


Hi all,

I'm working on a tangentally-related effort for the government to use
RSS-1.0 for emerging tech.  I'm impressed by Danny's linking of an RSS feed
from a DOAP document[1].  But how about the other way 'round?

What's the right way for an RSS feed item to point to a DOAP document?

Is this a reasonable way?

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rdf:RDF
 xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
 xmlns:doap="http://usefulinc.com/ns/doap#"
 xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"
 xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
 xmlns="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/" >
<item rdf:about="http://some/news/item/URI">
 <title>News about project x</title>
 <description>Blah, blah, New! Improved! Now with 30% more!</description>
 <rdfs:seeAlso>
  <doap:Project rdf:about="http://some/project/uri/" />
 </rdfs:seeAlso>
 <rdfs:seeAlso>
  <channel rdf:about="http://some/project/uri/rssfeed.rdf" />
 </rdfs:seeAlso>
</item>
<rdf:Description rdf:about="http://some/project/uri/">
 <dc:title>Some DOAP Project</dc:title>
 <channel rdf:resource="http://some/project/uri/rssfeed.rdf" />
</rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>

Granted, it's assumed that most RSS readers won't have any idea what to do
with the rdfs:seeAlso and rdf:Description links, but it's a start.  They'd
have to know to look for such things in the context of an item and then how
to deal with the typing of them.

While this adds a degree of verbosity, is this correct?

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rdf:RDF
 xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
 xmlns:doap="http://usefulinc.com/ns/doap#"
 xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"
 xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
 xmlns="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/" >
<item rdf:about="http://some/news/item/URI">
 <title>News about project x</title>
 <description>Blah, blah, New! Improved! Now with 30% more!</description>
 <rdfs:seeAlso>
  <doap:Project rdf:about="http://some/project/uri/" />
 </rdfs:seeAlso>
 <rdfs:seeAlso>
  <channel rdf:about="http://some/project/uri/rssfeed.rdf" />
 </rdfs:seeAlso>
</item>
<rdf:Description rdf:about="http://some/project/uri/">
 <dc:title>Some DOAP Project</dc:title>
 <channel rdf:resource="http://some/project/uri/rssfeed.rdf" />
</rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>

Am I correctly stating that this news item suggests you also see the project
URI and the rss feed, while also indicating that it's the project's own RSS
feed?  (troubling issues aside about making 'sure' about it actually 'being'
the project's own feed)

Given the hue and cry raised various times in the past about syntactical
verbosity, is there a way (that's worth doing) to further 'group' these?  I
want, essentially, to say "this is a news item about a particular project
and, if you're interested, here are the links for the project's doap file
and it's RSS feed."  From what I can tell using the validator the above RDF
fragment does this.  But, in consideration of the simple-XML folk that have
some expectations of hierarchical "tidy-ness", is there a proper way to get
everything 'wrapped' inside the <item/> element?

While we're here, is use of multiple rdfs:seeAlso elements correct and/or
necessary?  Is there some grouping construct that should be considered?  I
can recall Edd commenting some time ago that use of rdf:Bag containers and
the like was less useful than I'd imagined (and harder to parse).

The idea behind my efforts is that someone reading feeds to keep up to date
on emerging projects will be able to have their aggregator 'understand'
about watching for project news.  And be able to differentiate between the
item being a regular news blurb and one specifically about a project thing
(not just any one partcular project).  It'd certainly be useful to keep an
eye out for news of a given project, but it's also useful to stay on top of
projects in general independent of their presense among many other news-like
items.  (trust issues aside, of course)

I hope to give a presentation about this at the xml.gov town hall meeting
next week on the 17th at XML2004 here in DC.

Thanks,

-Bill Kearney
Syndic8.com

[1]
http://lists.usefulinc.com/pipermail/doap-interest/2004-August/000049.html




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