[rdfweb-dev] Re: Describing IRC networks with RDF or XML

[James M. Cape]

On Tue, 2003-06-17 at 06:25, Edd Dumbill wrote:
> For James: I saw your diary entry about an XML format for IRC servers. 
> I'm sending it to the attention of the FOAF community who are interested
> in many ways of marking up data like this.  Hopefully there may be some
> people here willing to comment on your draft format.
> 
> To rdfweb-dev:
> 
> Check out the stuff about an XML format for specifying an IRC network at
> http://www.advogato.org/person/Jimbob/diary.html?start=7
> 
> Don't know about you, but just looking at the first draft it screamed at
> me that this is something that could be modelled nicely in RDF.  It ties
> in well with the fact this community uses IRC servers a lot.
> 
> Using RDF would allow channels to tie themselves into servers without a
> central registry.  For instance, you could click on a channel
> description file from a web page and have your IRC client configure it
> in your settings.
> 
> At the bare minimum it would be excellent to see this description format
> use irc:// URIs for describing servers and channels, it's what it's
> there for, after all.
> 
> Anyone got any thoughts on this?

[If you guys could CC me on mails, that'd be cool, I'm not on
rdfweb-dev.]

To start, let me say that I'm completely UNfamiliar with RDF & FOAF. I'm
about as clueless as it gets, unfortunately.

Nevertheless, reading through the RDF docs, it seems like using RDF to
handle the network/server list would be worthwhile. For one thing, a
proper RDF for a network would let me handle categories in a somewhat
sane fashion (rather than the fixed
(large|small|regional|interest|custom) I'm doing right now). I will say
that doing this right seems like a lot of work. :-)

The idea behind the <channel id="#blah" /> was to let me put
network-help channels into the "Help" menu, not to describe every
channel on a network. I'd be kinda loathe to do anything beyond that in
my client, though the framework for doing that would also allow for cool
links in my client's UI. IOW, there's no particular harm to doing things
in RDF/FOAF, so long as I don't have to keep it stored w/ the network
list :-).

As for irc:// URIs, there's really no reason *not* to use them.

Anyways, my client is based on GNOME2, and is available in GNOME CVS
from the libgtcpsocket, libgircclient, and gnomechat modules. It's still
pretty rough & incomplete, but it's usable.

-- 
Peace,

    Jim Cape
    http://ignore-your.tv

    "It is literally true that, like Christianity, Socialism
     has conquered the world by defeating itself."
        -- Alexander Berkman, ABC of Anarchism
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