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RDF and OWL Are W3C Recommendations
J1 writes "The World Wide Web Consortium today released the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the OWL Web Ontology Language (OWL) as W3C Recommendations. RDF is used to represent information and to exchange knowledge in the Web. OWL is used to publish and share sets of terms called ontologies, supporting advanced Web search, software agents and knowledge management. Read the press release for the full list of twelve documents, read the testimonials, and visit the Semantic Web home page."
...you might be interested in a new project hosting site which was just opened - SemWebCentral. It already hosts several DAML tools, including ObjectViewer, the beginnings of an OWL plugin for Eclipse, and various others.
Semantic Web is a interesting progression. Maybe hopefully more sites will start to use better markup on their websites now. A lot of W3C standards seem overlooked by some pretty big sites.
Surely it's about time for Slashdot to go XHTML+CSS?
Join the Free Software Foundation
When I first read about "the semantic web", my first thoughts were "how the hell is this useful?"
About a year later, I noticed that Clay Shirkey had written an interesting article on the Semantic Web...
It's a bit of a long read, but it does sum up the issues with it quite handily.
The developers and end users will always ultimately determine what is most popular.
And the only browser to use the new recommendations
correctly is..... Phoni... Firebi... FireFox!
You mean the people who force us to put one ALT attribute for each IMG tag, but have 8 ALT="" on their own web page?
Who really cares about their recommendations?
Most blogs have RDF/RSS feeds right now. And just a few days ago there was an article right here on /. about embedding licensing information in web sites - more semantic webbery ;)
Microsoft? Didn't they use to make a browser or something?
This is where the serious fun begins.
Microsoft has already decided to use the RDF standard in it's XML based reporting solution. The interesting thing with this product is it's being touted as a open-source like product: reports are XML based, no binary required to view them, rdf would be a standard, reports are HTML-viewed, no required viewer. Which is funny that Microsoft is trying to break into the reporting market by being generic to break the hold of the current slew of companies that hold the monopoly there with more proprietary solutions.
Interesting don't ya think?
Peace Out.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
This is off-topic, but can someone explain, why RDF uses namespaces? Isn't it a bit overkill?
I've been looking for some sort of RDF review vocabulary so that I can incorporate product reviews into RSS feeds (but also store them seperately in a complete archive or something). With some sort of review aggregator/grabber, it seems like this would be simple to find out if your friends (as opposed to zealots) liked/disliked a product. The best-looking review vocabulary I've found is the Ideagraph one. Any tools that support reviews with such a format? Or any repositories for RDF reviews? Other formats?
True story.
RDF is actually quite usefull and is used when making extensions for FireFox/Mozilla among other things. Be sure to check out the RDF validator here as it can save you time.
It will be very interesting to see how RDF/XUL stands up against XAML.
Go here for teh [sic] funny.
It's legal. Sometimes alternate text is inappropriate for text browsers. If I have multiple images that make up my logo, for example, it would be approriate to only give one the logo text, and set the others to "". You need the alt, but you don't need to have it equal text.
Microsoft has released two new Microsoft Standards(tm) called MSRDF and MSOWL.
Speculation that these two new standards are broken versions of w3c's recent RDF and OWL releases was further confirmed when leaked documents with "w3c" blacked out in pen, the Microsoft logo added to the top with crayon and a few numbers blocked out with white out written back in with biro, came to light.
Criticism of Microsoft's horrifically buggy and insecure browser Internet Exploder(tm) was shot down by Steve "Developers(tm)" Ballmer who said that features were much more important than security. "People want to browse the web with help from our new Browser Assistant(tm) to assist them. We think an animated cartoon image of an owl will reassure our customers."
When another reporter pointed out that OWL had little or nothing to do with ornithology, cartoon, animated or otherwise, Steve looked a little uncomfortable and declined to answer any more questions.
Shouting "Developers Developers Developers!" loudly, and squirting sweat everywhere in what can only be assumed is a defence mechanism similar to an octopus ot squid, he beat a hasty retreat into a waiting helicopter.
The helicopter is later reported to have crashed. It was rebooted and a patch applied. The patch restored flying ability, but the doors no longer work. A patch is promised for the doors tomorrow.
(-1 offtopic) (+1 recovering from car crash, cut me some slack)
Political agendas aside, a standards body has to recognize what technologies and extensions are actually being used "in the wild" and incorporate them into the standard. Whether you like M$ or not, you have to recognize that MSIE is the de-facto standard browser today. A W3C standard means jack shit if MS doesn't implement it, and a W3C standard that doesn't address commonly-used MSIE extensions devalues WC3's credibility and usefulness as a standards body. All de-facto "standard" web languages need to be standardized, just as the competing implementations of JavaScript were standardized into ECMAscript.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
A lot of RDF out there is in FOAF and RSS 1.0 vocabularies. Increasingly, people use to link RDF files, which makes it possible to have RDF crawlers ("scutters") harvest RDF from the web. I have an RDF aggregator service running that crawls the semantic web. There's a lot of useless broken RDF out there, so if you put RDF on your web site please use W3C's RDF Validator to check for valid RDF.
The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation." -- Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, Ora Lassila, The Semantic Web, Scientific American, May 2001
... I must have missed that all the fuzziness was taken out of knowledge-processing (and human problem solving).
from http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/, emphasis mine
Hmm,
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Everyone knows that OWL stands for "Ordinary Wizarding Level." Come on, MIT, get with the program.
According to their site, RDF has been around since 1997. Why did it take six years to work out the details?
It is a master plan to turn web site creation in a thing so complicated that Indians will no longer be able to catch up with the neccessary standards.
So, in 2.5 centuries, when Governamental Mandatory Internet Explorer Browser V. 7.5 do implement all of these (stolen from GPLed code, of course), all those jobs will be re-insourcered into the USA.
-><- no
When I saw RDF, the first thing I thought of was, "The world wide web is going to use the Robotech Defense Force? Wow...that's a way of enforcing standards."
Ok, back into my hovel I go,
Joe
RDF is used to represent information and to exchange knowledge in the Web.
It's about time! For years I've been saying the Web needs a way to let people exchange knowledge. There's always been talk about this "language" and "text" stuff, but I never figured out what good they were. Now that we have RDF, we can actually exchange information and start making some progress.
Sarcasm aside, could somebody provide a description for RDF really does?
While the language might be open and standards based, my five bucks says that the Evil Empire will still try to keep their power by copyrighting or patenting or somethinging some of the schemas/layouts they use.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Microsoft didn't have people active in either Working Group. They didn't fund this any more than any other W3C (Full) Member.
They figured that something complicated allready existed and let's push that instead something simple and effective like RSS.
Then there's RDF-query, which is suppose to be used with RDF-rules and RDF schema. There's already a better protocol in xquery. W3C is rapidly becoming useless and isn't willing to find a compromise between solid theory and practical application.
It's been reported in other /. articles that on one hand, M$ will use an XML schema for all Word documents. However, the next licensing agreement for Office will stipulate that no one is permitted to reverse-engineer the schema for use in an open source project.
This makes me think that "security through legally -enforced obscurity" will be the order of the day in Redmond. Imagine if, say, all element names were encrypted, or were even just bloody confusing, e.g. <ioueWOIUKJRE87yjhi> arial </ioueWOIUKJRE87yjhi>.
This will make M$ appear open, but only appear so. C'est plus ca change...
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
read nothing instead of saying "image foo.jpg is here with no alt tag"
On a W3C-validated page it will *never* say "image foo.jpg is here with no alt tag" because it's impossible to have an image with no alt tag.
- If you think that there should be a distinction between alt="" and no-alt, then no-alt should be allowed.
- If you think that there shouldn't be a distinction, then it's simpler if you allow no-alt and use no-alt.
RDF is used to represent information and to exchange knowledge in the Web.
...or am I a troll?
Is that marketing speech for HTML?
If the markup is part of the content, it's not really pure content, or good markup. Markup tags should reference the content, not be embedded in it.
The separate Structure, Content and Markup layers should all be parsable without knowledge of the others.
--Mike--
just wondering...
Don't know if the AC will check on this later or not, but the point is that you never want a screen reader saying that. You want to have it spit out useful information (ie: Slashdot image in the upper left, "Welcome to Slashdot") or nothing at all.
If you've ever used clear gifs to space out a page just so, you've hit an area where this is important. You don't want the screen reader spitting something out for an image that the sighted can't even see. What would be the point?
In the W3C page, the 8 alt="" are all little triangle icons, that just sort of indent the text. Does a person who is blind need to hear "Triangular Icon" or "image right.gif is here with no alt tag"? I can't really think of a case for it.
No, no alt means no one bothered, but does not implicity mean there is no alternate text. alt="" explicitly means there is no alternate text. Thus, alt="" should be legal, while no alt should not.
I'm not sure why this hasn't been added to the FAQ yet.
My handy dictionary defines Ontology as:
1 : a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of being
2 : a particular theory about the nature of being or the kinds of existents.
So, WTF does that mean and what does it have to do with information?
I have a little web site. I am interested in using all of these new things, which all seem to be based upon XML.
So, how? What? What do I *do*?
There's so many of these things coming out, that I am lost.
Did anyone else think for a fraction of a second that RDF referred to Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field (RDF)? Scary... Yes offtopic i guess...sorry :-)
.... ... }
int main (void) {
Good one.
Yes, they're available via http and include many web technologies but really these are about metadata and relationship information, not presentation. There's more to "The Web" then endless HTML pages, and that other space is where these are aimed at. Material using these newly set standards can be linked and searched and eventually massaged for presentation but the raw stuff isn't intended for your traditional web browser to use itself.
Y'know, thats a really interesting opinion, but it would be more so if you were to tie it to the topic at hand. Yes these are quickly evolving technologies and yes, what's out in the field doesn't always match what's in the standards process. However when you talk to the folks doing this stuff IRL most will tell you they're trailblazing out of need and are quite enthusiastic about a standard eventually happening they can use. Indeed many of them are actively involved in the standard-setting process and applying the lessons they've learned.Sometimes the W3C does seem out in left field: It's got any number of way-far-ahead things cooking, as well as any number of other passed-by ones still stumbling along. It's hard to predict when starting up a committee what will be needed when they're done, nor always how it will end up being used, or if it will all be quickly irrelevant. On the other hand they're right on target much of the time, and if occasionally laggard they're as often prescient.
But back to the immediate topic both these specs being set will be welcomed in many circles. Neither appears perfect but both seem quite good, immediately usable, and without great conflict to past practice.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Great, yet another computer acronym with more than one meaning.
DARPA funded alot of this
...the OWL Web Ontology Language...
Did anyone else misread that as OWL Web Ornothology Language?
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
alt="" can also mean no one bothered, if it was put by your html editor by default.
Is someone dylexic or just trying to be cute? Wouldn't OWL be Ontology Web Language?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
See the OWL Faq
It says: Q. What does the acronym "OWL" stand for?
A. Actually, OWL is not a real acronym. The language started out as the "Web Ontology Language" but the Working Group disliked the acronym "WOL." We decided to call it OWL. The Working Group became more comfortable with this decision when one of the members pointed out the following justification for this decision from the noted ontologist A.A. Milne who, in his influential book "Winnie the Pooh" stated of the wise character OWL:
"He could spell his own name WOL, and he could spell Tuesday so that you knew it wasn't Wednesday..."
nice to see a working group with a sense of humor...
It's because the the Web Ontology Language Working Group disliked the acronym "WOL" and decided to call it OWL.
Also, consider the A. A. Milne character Owl, who "could spell his own name WOL, and he could spell Tuesday so that you knew it wasn't Wednesday, and he could read quite comfortably when you weren't looking over his shoulder saying "Well?" all the time...".
The Army reading list
For Steve's Reality Distortion Field
God, is he going to be pissed to see it become an open standard!
If you want to be pedantic, a more appropriate alt text for the triangle icon would be ">" or maybe "|>" or even "*".
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
http://www.zopto.com/
is because DARPA lit a fire under the W3C. DARPA also funds semantic web related research. I personally prefer RuleML for a markup language than RDF-rules, which blow. a backward chaining/query based rule language is not scalable and is pretty retarded. This is especially true when you consider the fact that W3C's CWM (closed world machine) is very simple. Most real applications use rule engines that implement RETE algorithm. W3C lately thinks like a closed world. If you don't do it their way, they're not interested.
Gee, I understand the screen reader and all that, there's not much to argue there. My point is something else, and it looks like I have to hold your hand through it. First, just answer this question:
Which one of these three possibilities inside an img tag should be allowed in a stardard.
(1) alt="blahblah"
(2) alt=""
(3) (no alt declaration)
Then I'll make another post depending on your answer.
so "Greater Than"
or "Bar, Greater Than"
or "Asterisk"
Alt tags aren't supposed to be ASCII art, they're supposed to tell the user of text based - and in particular text to speech screen readers - what the image is. If the image isn't anything useful, there's no point in it saying anything.
alt="" very clearly shows that this image is irrelevant, anything else just confuses things.
Advanced users are users too!
This connects with his mistaken point that the Semantic Web is based on some single universal ontology. This is of course the opposite of what RDF is about -- it's about allowing lots of ontologies to be used side by side.
So we don't model the real world perfectly, we model it well enough for some set of applications in some ontology. Every database designer, nearly every programmer does this all the time. We model it well enough and then the computers... do what computers do.
RDF is nothing new here. What's new is establishing a fairly wide and precise consensus around a language for communicating data about arbitrary things.
I should never have discussed politics with cheetos up my rectum. I should stop now.
Dude, I think that you are mistaking Bush for Lieberman.
tag, you'd want the ALT text to produce the same output that you'd get from a bulleted list. How is a bullet handled in text-to-speech?
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
tag, they should probably just use a
tag? If the author needs special consideration for how it's "rendered" (either visually or audibly), they should tweak the presentation with style sheets.
The point is, every bit of content should be meaningful. ASCII art isn't really appropriate anywhere (IMO).
(I'm not the original poster, but I figured I could chime in meaningfully.)
From a strictly theoretical perspective, if I were inventing a new language called "HTML" and could be reasonably sure implementers would do it properly, I might personally accept all three, making #2 and #3 equivalent.
The problem is that 99% of the HTML on the Internet is bad, and non-graphical user agents are widely deployed and know that the markup is bad. As a result, they are obligated to not consider #2 and #3 as equivalent. Images without an 'alt' attribute may or may not be significant. It's ambiguous and assuming the image isn't significant will be a bad assumption for the bulk of the HTML content out there.
The solution was to require the 'alt' attribute. Tools that validate HTML, as a result, will fail a document if there's an 'img' element without an 'alt' attribute. This gives HTML authors an opportunity to stop and think about what's going on and to make a meaningful decision about what to put into it.
So in theory, #2 and #3 ought to be treated similarly. That's simply not practical, however, and the newer standards were written with that in mind.
While true, this is also out of the scope of the design of the markup language. It's an issue you'd need to take up with the HTML editor developer(s) and/or the users (in the form of education). Requiring an 'alt' attribute is an attempt through standards to force people to make things meaningful and explicit. That's pretty much all you can do (from a standards-setting perspective).
The question you ask is really relevant.
As part of my thesis "How to cope with incorrect HTML" (.ps, University site with link to pdf version) I tested 2.4 million sites in the Open Directory Project.
These tests showed that only 0.7% of all the HTML documents were valid. It feels really odd to have a standard that so few documents adhere to. The thesis describes in much more detail the different errors(see pages 81-91).
"It takes two persons to lie,
one to lie,
and one to listen"
-Homer Simpson
(of course if IE and netscape hadn't listened to HTML "programmers'" lies, this problem never would have evolved... but then would the web have grown?)
40% Troll
..at the moment. Yum.
30% Insightful
30% Funny
Especially given that you can use css to style ul list items whichever way you want. You can replace them with pink elephants outlined by red dotted squares if you want. There's no reason, EVER, to use img tags for bullet entries, unless you simply don't know your stuff as a web designer.
I always make sure my html contains no layout whatsoever, and only structure (and content ofcourse). If you can't do it in css, you're better off not doing it at all. Otherwise your site will just break in too many corner cases and won't be futureproof.
Seriously, think about it. Is he serious, or is he joking. Is he liberal, conservitive, or just funny? Brilliant responce to a troll! If I had Mod points... It would be up there. But I guess its just pearls before swine. here. No offense to swine.
Slightly OT, but is there a version of Mozilla written in Smalltalk?
I wonder what percentage of web page authors are even actually aware of the fact that there are standards they're supposed to be following? If people are incapable or unwilling to learn to use their own native language correctly, what makes you think they'll be willing or able to use an artificial language correctly? Considering how much web content has basic gramatical errors, I'd say the percentage is pretty low.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Talking about acronyms, I was looking for something related to RDF (Resource Description Framework) and here are some of the things I found:
RDF also stands for:
Recapture Data File
Regional Democracy Fund
Remote Database Facility
Research Development Funds
Radio Direction Finder
Reserve Defence Force
Refuse Derived Fuel
Reserve Defence Force
Reginald D. Flowers