Re: PRISM and RSS

["David Smiley" <dsmiley@mitre.org>]

**1st off, I'd like to say that I only have some basic knowledge of 
RDF, so if I make any mistakes (and I invariably will), please 
correct me.  The specs at W3C are pretty harry.  _Thanks_.**

> I like PRISM a lot, but RSS 1.0 is simpler.

"Simpler" is subjective... I think there is more to their spec than 
RSS 1.0, but you don't have to use what you don't need.

> And neither is "more
> RDF based" than the other.

RSS 1.0 uses "item" tags to describe news items and the "channel" tag 
to denote the channel.  In PRISM, they are all rdf:Description.  Why 
doesn't RSS 1.0 use rdf:Description?  Also, I see tags like "title" 
and "link" in an RSS 1.0 document.  By convention, the rdf:about 
attribute is "link", so why the redundancy?  Why "title" in the RSS 
1.0 namespace when there is one of the same name in the Dublin Core 
namespace?  These things strike me as RSS 1.0 "doing its own thing" 
and deviating from more standard compliance.

>We can mix PRISM constructs into RSS 1.0
> feeds, or RSS 1.0 extension modules could be used in PRISM.

Fine, but that argument doesn't support a need for both to exist.

>My take is
> that PRISM comes much more from an "industry" perspective than (all
> flavours of) RSS, so there may be some culture clash too in the way 
the
> spec(s) are produced and managed.

Given the close similarity between both specs, and the fact that both 
are basically finished (barring namespaced extentions), I don't think 
differences in culture is a sufficient argument for RSS 1.0 to 
exist.  We needn't deal with the PRISM working group whatsoever if we 
want to go off and make our own extentions.  It would be nice to 
colaborate, of course, but it is not a necessity.  We could even 
clarify that spec when there turns out to be issues and it would take 
too long to consult with the PRISM working group.  An example would 
be HTML entitites in descriptions.

> The point of RDF in this context is that both can proceed happily, 
and
> applications can be written that consume either or both kinds of RDF
> data.

That both can proceed happily does not mean both should exist.  

>RSS 1.0 exists, is useful, and doesn't (because of the use of
> XML namespaces and RDF) need to be interfered with much.

Fine, but still...

>The interesting
> work now should be on tools, tutorials and content, not the core
> spec. We've seen interest in the last two days on extending RSS for 
use
> with calendar/event descriptions and with music; neither extension
> requires us to change RSS 1.0, they're both simply additional RDF
> vocabularies.

The same can be said for PRISM.

>As such, they can also be mixed with PRISM data. 
> 

There's a lot of wheel re-inventing in computer science, and I'm 
trying to nip-this one in the butt.

-- David Smiley