Re: [syndication] Re: Thoughts, questions, and issues.

[Ian Graham <ian.graham@utoronto.ca>]

On Mon, 21 Aug 2000, Seth Russell wrote:

> Ian Graham wrote:
> 
> > Well, that's fine, but entirely avoids the question:  what generic,
> > minimal set of information is desired in a data syndication message,
> >
> > independent of the data being syndicated?
> 
> Sorry, I missed that point in your message.  What's wrong with the
> dublin core? That's a pretty minimal set of information.  And if you

Information is vocabulary plus syntax -- which is why this whole thing is
boiling down to a messy mix of RDF plus many different namespace-declared
vocabularies (which may also come with syntax rules different from RDF
of course).  

> want more information that's not defined in dublin core, just create
> (or choose) another  namespace and have at it.  Are your looking for a
> definitive minimal set of syndication information?  Hmmm .. i don't
> think definitive minimals exist .. do they?

Syndication is a process, and any process will have some set of data
required across all variants of the process.  For example, syndication
probably requires a URL to reference a syndicated resource, some date
information about the resource, and some specification of syndication
rules. And, if a resource contains multiple resources, then it need some
way of knowing how such properties are (or are not) inherited down through
the document.

Of course you can express all this information and these relationships
with RDF.  But it helps to know what relationships or information are
important before doing so.

Ian