14 Jun
2010
14 Jun
'10
1:25 p.m.
On 2010-06-14, at 10:58, fons(a)kokkinizita.net wrote:
It's meant for machines, so you wouldn't have seen one, but here's an example:
http://www.google.com/s2/webfinger/?q=s.w.harris@gmail.com&fmt=foaf
After reading that for the N-th time, it's not clear at all if
the lines quoted above (from that very file) are required or not,
and *if* they are required, for what purpose - how this information
is used. If the links are not followed, they are little more than
magic incantations. Does the software that reads someplugin.ttl
depend on these things or not (AFAICS it doesn't) ?
Some things are marked MUST, some SHOULD. I don't see how it could be more clear.
It's not an attack but an opinion, and certainly not directed at
you (Steve) personally. If I wanted to attack you 'ad hominem'
I would not choose a subject in which you are 1000 time more expert
than I am - it would be very easy to select one where the roles
would be reversed.
Well, I am one of those people who believe that I'm creating meaning.
No, and no, but it's missing the point. Just because some percentage of the data is
wrong, it doesn't mean there's not value to sharing it (c.f. Wikipedia).
On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 08:04:06AM +0100, Steve Harris
wrote:
User, as in developer? LV2 users never see turtle data.
This what we had in LADSPA, more or less, but in reality it said things like
"Licence": "GPL", which is not very helpful.
On 2010-06-13, at 21:17, fons(a)kokkinizita.net
wrote:
To whom or what ? If the destination is a human, something
like
# Author: Steve Harris
# License: GLPv2
would seem a bit more user friendly. I've been wondering what is the purpose of
things like:
@prefix : <http://lv2plug.in/ns/lv2core#> .
@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> .
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema> .
@prefix doap: <http://usefulinc.com/ns/doap#> .
@prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/> .
where 'doap' stands for 'Description Of A Project', and
'foaf' for 'Friend Of A Friend'.
So, the plugin contains a certain amount of "metadata".
Things like the licence, the author, where to go and find
documentation, and so on.
The DOAP and FOAF schemas can express this information and are widely
used on the internet (there are in excess of 200M
FOAF files out there), so reusing their structures makes sense.
I've never seen one. And certainly when I'd see one it wouldn't
look very inviting to read it. Is this meant for humans ? If not
*which software is reading this, and what is it doing with the
information provided* ? If this has to be part of an LV2 plugin somehow (and
it's not
clear if it has to be or not), AND whatever software that is
reading this is *not* supposed to follow these links and find
some information there, what is the purpose ?
http://lv2plug.in/spec/lv2.ttl defines what data must be present. I'm more and more convinced that people creating
these sort of
thing entertain the illusion that they somehow create meaning
while there is none. It looks more like an extreme form of
illiteracy, a complete failure to convey meaning in a form that
makes sense to a human.
Oh joy. Random ad hominem attacks remind me why I lost interest
in the free software "community". I'm not
quite sure why you have come to such a dismissive
conclusion, of a technology that you admit you don't understand.
It's always possible that the many thousands of companies using
this technology to solve real world problems are operating under
some sort of mass hysteria of course, but I don't think so.
Such a mass hysteria wouldn't be the first one - we've seem some
bubbles bursting before. And whatever problem these companies
are solving seem to be quite remote from audio plugins.
The essential point in my comment is that it is foolish to confuse
the 'semantic web' with reality. Are your 13857 Facebook friends
real friends ? Are those 200e6 'FOAFs' what they claim to be ? Back to the technical side, it all seems as futile as
including
a complete BNF of the C language (or a reference to it) at the top
of each *.c source file. It's useless to the compiler (which is not
going to modify itself), and it's useless for the human reading or
editing the file.
I disagree, but I'm thoroughly uninterested in arguing the point.
I see a very large value in standardisation, even across domains - clearly you don't,
and that's a perfectly valid viewpoint. History will no doubt show one of us to be
correct.
- Steve