DISQUS

Seth · 4 years ago

I've always said the biggest roadblock to RDF adoption isn't it's semantics, but it's syntax. As soon as we agree on 1) a simple, validatable XML format and 2) a simple text format (yes, N3 exists, but it's neither a standard nor free of the ':' character) we'll be rocking.

Until we're able to have metadata about tags (as this post suggests) then tags are just keywords. Remeber HTML meta keywords anyone? :)

Dylan Beadle · 4 years ago

Maybe n3 is a simple enough option for your needs?

James Tauber · 4 years ago

I had some thoughts related to this in my post Tag the Tags.

Jamie Pitts · 4 years ago

This conversation definitely needed to get started. I have been thinking about this one ever since I started sketching out how to present the data I have been processing to general web users, semantic users, and to the google machine.

Ultimately, there will be separate presentations of the same data for human consumption and for machine consumption.

In designing a better human-readable assertion language, we need to understand our priorities. One important design goal beyond readability is speakability.

I am thinking of a very formal sort of writing which, while somewhat repetitive, achieves the fluidity of the spoken word. The assertions would have to be translatable into rdf without (m)any errors. That won't be easy.

What I want to do right now is present my semantic data about finance in a way which will encourage mortal contributors to refer to assertions and even add their own. I cannot expect people to use rdf to interact with a web service, nor perform a lot of gui interaction.

Brendan Avery · 4 years ago

I ABSOLUTELY agree that the real issue with RDF adoption and use by casual developers and 'knowledge-engineers' as well as buy-in to knowledge-capture software systems that focus on RDF metadata is the tremendous visual mess that comprises the pool of available syntaxes for expressing RDF triples and relationships especially in the context of plain-text. It's just not friendly to the eyes or brain. It's also nearly impossible to implement these in the context of a Wiki or other 'casual' editor systems.

For the last few years I've been experimenting with and working on a 'tags-triples'-like syntax primarily for use with text-based in-line metadata markup, as in Wiki-type knowledge capture systems. I just started a java-based project for this called Juju ( http://juju.sourceforge.net ), which I will be posting source files and tutorials/examples online sometime in the next couple of weeks. The system's parser-engine will allow for customizable/multiple syntaxes depending on the implementation needs, but the essense of it is that you could write a WikiWord like LukeSkywalker and then define the link like LukeSkywalker>>Brother>>LeiaOrgana or on the LukeSkywalker page, since the context is LukeSkywalker already, it would accept a shortcut like DarthVader>>Father. Note that the direction of the chevrons/double-arrows indicates the direction of the Subject>>Predicate>>Object triple-form, so that a reverse arrow means Object< <predicate><<subject. the="The" shortcut="shortcut" form="form" with="with" a="a" forward="forward" chevron="chevron" assumes="assumes" that="that" the="the" missing="missing" item="item" is="is" the="the">>Father means DarthVader>>Father>>LukeSkywalker and LeiaOrgana<<brother means="means" leiaorgana="LeiaOrgana"><</brother><brother><<lukeskywalker. the="The" system="system" right="right" now="now" doesn="doesn"></lukeskywalker.></brother></subject.></predicate>

Brendan Avery · 4 years ago

my post got truncated -- i don't know if you got the rest in an email or anything, but i'll be subscribing to your rss and will be posting more on juju soon w/ some more complete examples.