On 25 Jun 2009, at 21:18, Pat Hayes wrote:
If [RDF] requires people to tinker with files with names starting
with a dot [...] then the entire SWeb architecture is fundamentally
broken.
RDF doesn't. Apache does.
Many hosts do have front ends for configuring Apache, allowing
redirects to be set up and content-types configured by filling in
simple web forms. But there are such a variety of these tools with
different capabilities and different interfaces that it would be
difficult to produce advice suitable for them all, so instead
".htaccess" recipes are provided instead.
That said, there are a couple of steps that Martin could remove from
his recipe and still be promoting reasonably good practice:
Step 5a - this rewrites <http://example.org/semanticweb> to <http://
example.org/semanticweb.rdf>. Other than aesthetics, there's no real
reason to do this. Yes, I've read timbl's old Cool URIs document, and
understand about not wanting to include hints of file format in a
URI. But realistically, this file is going to always include some RDF
- perhaps in a non-RDF/XML serialisation, but I don't see anything
inappropriate about serving other RDF serialisations using a ".rdf"
URL, provided the correct MIME type is used.
Step 5b - the default Apache mime.types file knows about application/
rdf+xml, so this should be unnecessary. Perhaps instead have a
GoodRelations "validator" which checks that the content type is
correct, and only suggests this when it is found to be otherwise.
Steps 3 and 4 could be amalgamated into a single "validate your RDF
file" step using the aforementioned validator. The validator would be
written so that, upon a successful validation, it offers single-click
options to ping semweb search engines, and Yahoo (via a RDF/XML-
>DataRSS converter).
With those adjustments, the recipe would just be:
1. Upload your RDF file.
2. Add a rel="meta" link to it.
3. Validate using our helpful tool.
--
Toby A Inkster
<mailto:m...@tobyinkster.co.uk>
<http://tobyinkster.co.uk>
