[rdfweb-dev] XSLTs for FOAF, Spring v1.3.1 and plans for FOAFspecimprovements

[Julian Bond]

Jim Ley <jim at jibbering.com> wrote:
>"Julian Bond" <julian_bond at voidstar.com>
>> I think RSS 2.0 can teach us something here. It should be possible to
>> use namespaces to allow extendability and to allow intermixed RDF while
       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> still maintaining a consistent structure of FOAF elements that are
>> parsable by plain XML parsers.
>
>I really don't see the value in having some constrained format of FOAF
>without extensions
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

There's some leap here I don't get. I thought I was saying extensions
are good.

>> This could just as easily have been coded
>> <foaf:Person rdf:ID="1">
>>   <foaf:knows>
>>     <foaf:Person rdf:ID="2">
>>     <foo:relationship>Acquaintance</foo:relationship>
>
>Not in an RDF model...  So it would instantly break for all the real RDF
>parsers out there.

Which just exposes my lack of knowledge of RDF. I'm sorry my examples
were invalid.

>To me your basic viewpoint is one coming from a very constrained view on
>FOAF based on your use cases, please look to other peoples use cases.

Jim, we seem to be approaching this from orthogonal directions.
Fundamentally, my thoughts are about the adoption and lifecycle of
standards. A technically good standard that is hard for average
programmers to deal with is not going to get wide implementation. I see
enormous potential in FOAF in all sorts of areas not just describing
networks of people. But if average programmers can't cope with it, it
will remain an academic's plaything. (please excuse the word academic,
it's not meant to be abuse!). Now we can raise the water or lower the
bridge. I've been pushing here on one end by trying to understand
whether the standard can be brought closer to the XML world so that the
many, many XML parser tools can be used. The big reason for this was my
bad experience at the turn of the year trying to find a PHP parser that
was stable and worked. At that time I failed. Anyway, it's pretty clear
that you think bringing the standard to the tools won't work. Well OK,
then FOAF adoption is going to be dependent on bringing the tools to the
standard. Maybe I'm wrong but my perception is that there's still many
programming environments that don't have a stable, mature RDF parser.

-- 
Julian Bond Email&MSM: julian.bond at voidstar.com
Webmaster:              http://www.ecademy.com/
Personal WebLog:       http://www.voidstar.com/
M: +44 (0)77 5907 2173   T: +44 (0)192 0412 433