On Tue, 24 Jul 2001, Stefan Kokkelink wrote:
> Aaron Swartz wrote:
> >
> > On Monday, July 23, 2001, at 11:09 AM, Andy Powell wrote:
> >
> > > I'm not sure I know what you mean by a 'well-specified Dublin
> > > Core subset
> > > of RDF'? Do you mean implementing encoding schemes using
> > > constructs like [...]
> >
> > Yes, I do. That way RDF parsers can parse the stuff, and we
> > don't keep them out of the game.
>
> I think this is *very* important. Although more powerful, there
> may be good reasons to use XML instead of RDF (complexity, available
> software etc.).
>
> However, there should be one requirement for every XML
> representation (defined by a DTD or XML Schema or
> whatever): it should be valid RDF. This is only a slightly
> constrain for the XML representation but of great value
> for interoperablilty.
I remain unconvinced that this is 'only a slight constraint' on the XML
representation. Making RDF mandatory is at odds with keeping things
simple. The examples in my document are not valid RDF...
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<metadata
xmlns="http://myorg.org/myapp/"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://myorg.org/myapp/
http://myorg.org/myapp/schema.xsd"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
<dc:title>
UKOLN
</dc:title>
<dc:subject>
national centre, network information support, library
community, awareness, research, information services,public
library networking, bibliographic management, distributed
library systems, metadata, resource discovery,
conferences,lectures, workshops
</dc:subject>
<dc:description>
UKOLN is a national focus of expertise in digital information
management. It provides policy, research and awareness services
to the UK library, information and cultural heritage communities.
UKOLN is based at the University of Bath.
</dc:description>
<dc:publisher>
UKOLN, University of Bath
</dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier>
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
</dc:identifier>
<dc:date>
2001-07-18
</dc:date>
</metadata>
It is more less the XML representation used in OAI for example. What
needs to change to make this valid RDF?
I would argue that these examples are very much the kind of XML people
implementing DC in XML will come up with. How are schemes handled in HTML
and XHTML? As an attribute on the <meta> element. That is the intuitive
way of expressing a scheme IMHO and very much in line with the xml:lang
mechanism. To suggest to people that they do otherwise is to ask them to
do non-intuitive things :-( .
Andy
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