[OGDev] RDF improvements (was: What are people working on?)

[Tom Heath]

Hey Earle

> Hi Tom, sorry for the slow reply, I've been busy.

No worries. Know the feeling :)

Sounds like we're pretty much in agreement about most things, so I'll
just reply to the other stuff...

> > I prefer slash URIs as I believe they make a clearer
> > distinction between a thing and a document about a thing (and 303
> > redirects help avoid any ambiguity). They also send a stronger message
> > about a URI of a thing being independent of any one particular
> > document.
>
> Yeah, sure; to a human a pile of line-noise (.?&=%bleah) isn't too
> clear. Would you prefer example.com/guide/Foo_Bar/rdf or
> example.com/guide/rdf/Foo_Bar? Also, since those would be the 303
> redirects, what would they redirect to?

I have a reasonable preference for the <example.com/guide/Foo_Bar/rdf>
pattern, as it allows to substitute /rdf with other "extensions" for
other serialisations, e.g. /html, /n3, /txt, whilst also being
conceptually similar to regular .html or .rdf file extensions. Plus it
puts the object first and the serialisation second, which just kinda
seems right :)

In terms of the redirects, the URI <http://example.com/guide/Foo_Bar/>
identifies this object/thing, and so redirects would be served on this
URI, redirecting with 303s to e.g.
<http://example.com/guide/Foo_Bar/rdf> or
<http://example.com/guide/Foo_Bar/html>. Ideally content negotiation
on the object URI would redirect the user-agent to the relevant
serialisation. All links within an OpenGuide would then be made to the
object URI I guess, rather than to either of the URIs that represent
HTML or RDF documents describing the object that is identified by the
object URI (and breathe...), though haven't given this much thought
yet.

> For example, even though it makes no difference at the
> > machine level, as a human being using
> > <http://london.randomness.org.uk/wiki.cgi?id=Angel%2C_SE16_4NB;format=rdf#obj>
> > to identify the pub in a different document would still niggle me a
> > bit. It just seems the wrong way around; surely the pub is the primary
> > object, and any particular description of it is secondary?
>
> Right. I'm sure we can hash something better out.

Cool.

> > > Sorry? I don't follow... The RDF is completely independent of
> > > anything; it was hand-composed. Unless you're referring to schemata
> > > (yay Greek!) that we rely on as modules, rather than Perl modules?
> >
> > OK, that's interesting, I hadn't realised that. What I was really
> > getting at is that (as I understand it) the OG software relies on Perl
> > modules for generic Wiki functionality (of course I may be totally
> > wide of the mark here, having never really delved around under the
> > hood). If that is the case then our ability to redfine the addressing
> > scheme for OpenGuides and create "pretty URIs" may be limited, as the
> > modules define the URI syntax. Please clarify things for me if I'm
> > wrong about this.
>
> Right. Well, at present the CGI interface defines the URI syntax, but
> we control the code, so the format of the URIs is entirely up to us.
> What can be thought of can be coded.
>
> > Just so I follow you, are you wedded to the fragment identifiers
> > themselves, or simply the distinction between the "object/thing" and
> > the "document about the object/thing"?
>
> Definitely the latter.

Great.

> > Not necessarily. If <http://wherever.openguides.org/contributors/bob/>
> > returned a HTTP303 response and a "Location:
> > http://wherever.openguides.org/contributors/bob/about" header,
> > (where <http://wherever.openguides.org/contributors/bob/about> was a
> > document describing Bob) then we'd be doing the right thing aswell.
> > The # isn't essential.
>
> Yep. That's great.

Fantastic, sounds like we're all singing from the same hymn sheet.
I'll try and do that "this would be an ideal RDF output for an
OpenGuide entry" mockup sometime soon, as previously promised, and
assuming it's still relevant. Don't wanna duplicate effort with
anything you might work on though Earle, so shout if this would be the
case.

Cheers,

Tom.