Ian Graham wrote:

>I believe the issue is that the triples add an extra abstraction layer
>that developers don't understand or want.
>
Bolder dash! Programmers never had any problem with name_value pairs
... they loved and embraced them .. right? Well RDF is just name_value
pairs *about things*. Programmers never had any problem with relational
databases ... they loved and embraced them .... right? Well RDF is just
a relational database with a fixed and simplified column structure ...
i.e. just three columns. If you look at RDF as data and forget about
all the abstract semantics, it actually is a much simpler solution to
the problem of saying anything about anything. It's much simpler than
contriving customized structures every time we want to say something new.

>Well, I think some of Dave's ideas are poorly designed, but otherwise this
>is precisely the model (and rationale) he is following. OTOH, I am not in
>favor of specifications designed by fiat, as opposed to by some sort of WG
>consensus.
>
Well sometimes a single person can design a better structure ... where a
committee will end up with an aberration of compromises trying to attain
everybody's conflicting goals. I believe that RSS 1.0 is just such a
aberration. But the 2.0 spec preserves compatibility with thousands of .9x
feeds, yet allows for just the additional properties to be added which people
are screaming for. It seems to me that the RSS 2.0 spec just reflects where the
market is and where it wants to go. It's simple, uncontrived, and preserves the
momentum of RSS. It is truly going to be difficult for a committee to come up
with a better spec.

>One would hope so.. however, the 'muckiness' of type (1) RSS may make it
>hard to transform this into type (2)
>
Not at all. In fact we can transform any kind of items streaming in
channel documents into RDF nodes and arrows streaming in whatever
media. Emails, Usenet posts, XHTML marked up web pages, arbitrary XML,
RSS .9x, RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0 etc .... all can be included. I bid 2000
lines of code (or less) and a simple RDF description for each new kind
of format.

Seth Russell
http://robustai.net/