Is it OK to produce valid-but-strange-looking RDF?

[Bill Kearney]

> From: "Danny Ayers" <danny666 at v...>
> Subject: RE: Is it OK to produce valid-but-strange-looking RDF?
>
> I've just had the same problem with RSS - few (if any) of the readers seem
> to go beyond a vanilla XML interpretation, e.g. so the second item here is
> invisible:
>
> <item rdf:about="http://blah/blah.html">
> <title>One Page</title>
> ...
> <rdfs:seeAlso>
> <item rdf:about="http://blah/blah2.html">
> <title>Another Page</title>
> ...
> </item>
> </rdfs:seeAlso>
> </item>

You're putting an item inside an item? That's not RSS. No reader out there is
going to pick up on it. I'd go further and say you could do such a thing in
RSS-1.0 but you'd have to use the <items> element in the <channel> to assert the
<item> being part of the channel. Otherwise RSS has no support for an item
having an item of it's own.

> Long term - I think the the weight of benefits from using the RDF model will
> outweigh the perceived extra work, but short term...grrrr...

Quite right. And until people push the envelope on what the existing tools DO
versus what they CLAIM to do it's not going to improve much. Witness the recent
improvements to XML::RSS and, I believe, to XML::Simple. Working around the
crappy tools instead of fixing them seems to waste just way too much time and
effort. Yet people insist on cobbling up workarounds instead.

-Bill Kearney