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On Wed, 2002-01-16 at 20:52, Paul T wrote:
> > > 1. The process.
> > >
> > > I'm kinda tired of W3C geniuses silently and suddenly
> > > "Leading the Web to its Full Potential...".
> >
> > Huh? RDDL was concocted last year around this time on _this_ mailing
> > list. It's not a W3C activity, and never has been. It's never been
> > submitted as a Note, even.
>
> I know. And I think it is good that it never been submited
> as a Note.
Could you explain why? First you say it's bad W3C, now you say you're
glad it's not W3C. I can't figure out what you're saying.
> > > Too much politics around RDDL.
> >
> > I've barely heard political discussion about RDDL for months, except for
> > a nice burst at XML 2001. What politics are you talking about?
>
> In my oppinion, the RDDL itself is first of all a plain
> political act, if comparing it to any material, produced
> by SML-DEV, for example.
So producing material is a political act and should be avoided? Again,
I don't understand this. Nor do I understand what it has to do with
SML-DEV.
> > > 2. In my oppinion, current RDDL is a scientific
> > > stuff that can not be used to solve a 'real problem'
> > > (see below)
> > >
> > > RDDL makes some step into 'right direction',
> > > but I don't get many of 'design ideas' behind
> > > current RDDL ( yet another declarative
> > > XML-ish 'language' )
> > >
> > > I guess very few developers have enough
> > > time for it.
> >
> > Is this RDDL or RDF you're talking about? I see RDDL as pretty ordinary
> > documentation with a few pointers to resources, not "scientific stuff".
>
> You can replace 'scientific stuff' with 'pretty ordinary
> documentation with a few pointers', if you like.
>
> There is a references to XLink and many other
> words in RDDL paper. My first impression was that
> I just don't understand what are they talking about
> ( but that's could be my personal reaction to almost
> any document which is styled with W3C CSS stylesheets ).
Did you take a look at the actual use of linking? It doesn't require a
thorough understanding of XLink. I have no idea how styling with CSS
is causing you difficulties in understanding RDDL.
> What is RDDL for? Who is supposed to use it and for what ?
>
> With the risk of repeating myself :
>
> 1. If RDDL is for 'computers' - it has a questionable value.
> Those, who belive otherwise are welcome to explain, how
> can I use RDDL for writing a 'distributed application'
> or 'webservice' or whatever.
>
> 2. If RDDL is for 'humans' - then I belive that
> there is a very little value to host RDDL instead
> of plain HTML page.
It's for both humans and computers. This way humans can dereference the
link in a browser, and get human-readable documentation. Computers can
dereference the link, pick out the resources they need from the XML, and
download them if appropriate. It's not an EITHER - it's a BOTH.
> > > 4. A real problem is "what should I do when my
> > > software encounteres the 'unknown tag'". It can
> > > be solved on namespaces ( like RDDL does ).
> > > However, in my oppinion, it is better to be
> > > solved with a single and trivial attribute
> > > rddl-hook="URI" or something.
> >
> > I don't think anyone would argue if you wanted to do rddl-hook in your
> > own code, but RDDL did emerge from the endless discussions of "what goes
> > at the end of a namespace URI" - and ended those discussions pretty
> > nicely. (One bizarre outburst on www-talk@w3.org being the only
> > exception I've seen.)
>
> So in result of that discussion two guys have published some
> paper called RDDL, saying : "this could be at the end of
> namespace URI". You see it as a 'nice ending'. I would love
> to understand why do you think that it is :
>
> 1. Ending.
> 2. Nice.
On ending, I think the lack of further discussion on the subject
suggests that RDDL is reasonably convincing to most of the people who
have explored it.
On nice, I find the combination of human- and machine-readable to be a
pretty nifty concept I'd like to see pursued in general.
> > > Just place some human-readable documentation
> > > at the end of namespace URL and that
> > > would work. ;-)
> >
> > RDDL lets you do that. Links to resources are totally optional.
>
> Is RDDL for 'computers' or for 'humans' ? What is the
> real problem RDDL solves and who is using RDDL?
I use RDDL to document the namespaces for my namespace filters and
regular fragmentations:
http://simonstl.com/ns/namespaces/
http://simonstl.com/ns/fragments/
The RDDL documents for Regular Fragmentations will be getting an upgrade
shortly and I'm writing the RDDL document for Gorille presently.
For me, it's the best way I've found to document a vocabulary (to
humans) and point to resources for processing it (for both humans and
computers).
> To me, RDDL is just a nice looking paper, responding to
> the fact that there 'could be something at the end of
> namespace URI'.
And why is that a problem?
> Problem 'what will be at the and of namespace URI'
> is still neither solved, nor addressed and it is also
> orthogonal to 'how can we make XML self-describing'.
I don't think RDDL is intended to permanently solve the namespace URI
issue, in large part because I don't think the URI community believes
that's a problem to solve.
As for "self-describing", I don't think that term has any meaning
whatsoever. I'll happily settle for convenient.
> The explanations are in my previous letters on this subject.
I don't see how those explanations have much to do with RDDL.
> I believe that it would be better for me to disappear from
> this thread now.
I believe that will make it even harder for me to figure out what you're
saying.
--
Simon St.Laurent
Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
Errors, errors, all fall down!
http://simonstl.com
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