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Re: [ontology-summit] The tools are not the problem (yet)

To: Ontology Summit 2014 discussion <ontology-summit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Krzysztof Janowicz <janowicz@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2014 08:25:33 -0800
Message-id: <52E293FD.5020901@xxxxxxxx>
Dear John,    (01)

yes sure, I understand your thoughts and the history of why W3C 
preferred XML at that time. Now, however, since some years, we can 
simply use N3, Turtle, and JSON-LD and this clearly makes using RDF 
simpler, more intuitive, and also better to parse.    (02)

>> That multiplicity is a symptom of a bad design.    (03)

I am not sure. To me the idea of separating the serialization seems like 
a good idea, especially to be able to follow new trends in technologies 
and the Web in general.    (04)

I am not disagreeing that there are several design problems with RDF, 
e.g., the missing ability to scope statements (e.g., temporarily). But 
this does not mean that RDF would not be extremely useful and so far it 
made a great contribution. For instance, it allowed us to create the 
Linked Data cloud which seems to be the biggest knowledge graph ever 
generated (and yes, there are also problems with LD).    (05)

Best,
Krzysztof    (06)


On 01/24/2014 04:16 AM, John F Sowa wrote:
> Krzysztof,
>
> No declarative or procedural language in the history of computer
> science and applications has as many notations as RDF and OWL.
> That multiplicity is a symptom of a bad design.
>
> In fact, even the two designers -- Guha and Bray -- admitted that
> RDF notation was bad.  As Tim Bray said, "It's the syntax, stupid."
>
> JFS
>>> That is why they [Google] use JSON instead of the XML-based notations.
>
> KJ
>> Just for clarification, RDF is not restricted to XML. You can also use
>> N3. There is also a JSON format for Linked Data called JSON-LD.
>
> JSON, by the way, is just LISP notation with brackets and curly braces.
> LISP was, in fact, Guha's preferred notation.  And JSON was designed
> by Netscape -- where Guha and Bray were employed at the time.
>
> But many voters in the W3C were in the grip of an untested ideology:
> edict XML for everything.  I had been using GML at IBM since the 1970s,
> and I still use HTML for all my word processing.  (I use OpenOffice or
> LibreOffice for converting HTML to .doc or .pdf format.)
>
> But a notation that's good for word processing is a disaster for
> logic, ontologies, data storage, data transmission, human factors,
> education, and official standards.
>
> John
>
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-- 
Krzysztof Janowicz    (08)

Geography Department, University of California, Santa Barbara
5806 Ellison Hall, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4060    (09)

Email: jano@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Webpage: http://geog.ucsb.edu/~jano/
Semantic Web Journal: http://www.semantic-web-journal.net    (010)

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