Re: No new mime types

[Bill de hÓra <bill@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Henry Story wrote:

> Anyway. I'll stop this. The point is I don't want to hear anyone say 
> anymore on this list that RDF does not solve a REAL serious problem.  
> Here we are needing a new mime type just to define a list of a structure 
> defined in atom!
>
> QED.

No. Please stop making this claim, I know you wish it were true, but 
it's not, and I'm tired of debunking it.

I feel like I'm talking to the WS people again, 5 years later, 2 layers up.

RDF categorically *does not solve* this problem. It *mitigates* it, on 
the belief that we will tend to see less model theories than formats 
flying around.  It also introduces a new problem which is mixing formal 
semantics under a single document structure - the latter has no solution 
as of today afaict and impacts on at least 3 different layers - media 
type, XMLNS and implication.

On the web media types are *authoritative* metadata. If you want to 
interchange information on the web, media types are the final word on 
how content is to be interpreted. We bind reasoning engines to data the 
same way we bind format serializers to data. The dispatching mechanism 
is the same in both cases - the media type.

If you say something is "RDF", then it's to be understood as RDF, not as 
OWL or DAML, or something else. Trust me, XML people don't like that 
fact any more than RDF people, but the Web is not there to support the 
interests of various technology factions. Grice's maxims apply, even to 
the logicians.

cheers
Bill