Re: [xml-dev] RDDL is bad, replace it with my RDF

[David Carlisle <davidc@nag.co.uk>]

On 26/06/2012 20:00, Victor Porton wrote:
> I think to place an XHTML code (so called RDDL) at a namespace URL
> was a really bad idea. This URL is intended for computers not
> people, whilst XHTML is intended for people not computers.

The namespace REC actually makes it fairly clear that "it is not a goal"
for computers (or anything else) to dereference the namespace URI. Thus
the main reason for putting (X)HTML there is to help humans who make the
mistake of going there in their browsers, perhaps because they are using
an email program that makes anything that looks like a URL into an
active link, and people can't resist the urge to click on underlined
link text.

Having put XHTML there for humans, RDDL just allows you to put hooks
there for other software as well that may also want to be associated
with the URI in some way. This is harmless and possibly even useful.

Serving an RDF file directly from the URI seems like a very bad idea
unless the rdf mime type is explicitly requested in the request header.
As if the most likely recipient of the document is a naive human
clicking on links in an email program, being served up raw RDF/XML isn't
very friendly.

Of course there is nothing in principle to stop you serving xhtml, RDF a
schema, and a DTD all from the same namespace URI depending on the
request header.

David