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Subject: Re: [topicmaps-comment] OASIS vs W3C / Re: [sc34wg3] History
* Murray Altheim | "Tsao, Scott" wrote: | > From my perspective ("personal knothole") I would like to see these | > types of collaboration: | > | > (1) W3C/ISO | > Harmonization of core standards for RDF and XTM, between W3C | > RDF Core WG and ISO 13250 WG. | | This is the one I've had a problem with all along. Either there is | a misunderstanding (from not just you but many people) about the | essential nature of RDF and XTM or people are simply trying to | get rid of one or the other. They're apples and oranges, no, they're | apples and meatball pie, or apples and eyeglasses. What harmonization | can there be between RDF (graphs-in-XML) and XTM (subject-based | mapping technology)? Certainly it's possible to create an RDF-based | syntax for XTM, but you could also create any number of other syntax | representations. There could be a binary TM standard for all we know | (which might be valuable for passing around very large or pre-processed | topic maps). | | There is no essential advantage in having XTM be RDF-based, and given | that even hard-core RDF fanatics don't much like its syntax, this | doesn't make a lot of sense. XTM's syntax was designed from the | ground up to represent topic map semantics in XML markup. You can't | improve on that (in XML). Any advantages in RDF tools are mitigated | by the lack of RDF tools vs. XML tools and frameworks, ie., there's | *loads* of XML processing software out there. Besides, XTM processing | requirements mean that specialized engines must be used, and these | engines must import XTM syntax (and probably ISO 13250 syntax as well), | so adding some RDF representation would add only significant | complexity (and you'd need an RDF schema validator just to be sure | the document made syntactic sense). Every production-quality XML | parser out there can already validate XTM documents, so what's to | gain? | | I keep hearing this argument but it just never makes sense to me. | The only "harmonization" I see is perhaps a document describing | how XTM could map RDF content (as according to a *specific* RDF | Schema, not RDF in general which is impossible), or vice-versa. | We can already do this but a formalization might be valuable. | This is pretty simple stuff, and could possibly be considered | within the scope of the OASIS Published Subject TC. Amen. I've been wanting to say this for a long time. I'm glad you did. I really can't understand why so many are so focused on the subject in particular. There's so many other topic map related areas in which innovation can happen. * James David Mason | Something that was behind the reluctance of certain parties to change SGML | was an unhealthy competition between SGML and another ISO standard called | ODA (if you don't know what that was, consider yourself lucky). The SGML/ODA | Wars occupied entirely too much of our time and promoted an atmosphere of | paranoia on the parts of several of our members. In the long run, ODA died | and SGML won, but by then the forces that led to XML were already pushing | people out of SC34. The technical effect on SGML was mixed: it brought us | both CONCUR and Architectural Forms. The human effect was much more harmful. | We don't need a Topic Maps War. | | I believe the current discussion is good because it's getting some issues | settled, but I worry a bit because I hear echoes of old paranoia in the | participants. The Topic Maps vs. RDF war? Do I see similarities? Paranoia? You bet. ;) Geir O.
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