There appears to be a pretty solid consensus that this effort will not be defined or serialized using the ResourceDescriptionFramework model. As Norm Walsh said, "Fair enough." What we can expect, though, is for people familiar with RDF to help make sure things that would make interoperability with RDF better, simpler, or easier, to speak up about it — RDF applications will be among the users of Echo.
Specific to interoperability with RDF:
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Namespaces should end with a non-NCNameChar ('/' or '#' are suggested). This doesn’t impact other XML namespace-based tools or recommendations.
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It should be stated that use of Echo namespaces within RDF is a recognized usage.
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The same namespace + localName should be used with the same meaning whether it is an element or attribute name and regardless of element context. Note also that RelaxNg offers schema support for using either an element or attribute as a property of its parent element.
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RDF translators or XSLT should be linked from and/or developed on the Echo wiki. Ie. all your Echo resources in one place.
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Correspondingly, RDF developers, as users of Echo, should indicate where the content models of Echo elements could be more simply or discretely defined for interoperation without content translation. By comparison, XSLT users would probably share the same concerns that RDF users would.
See also: XmlAndRdf, NoToRdf, SyntaxExtensionMechanism, RdfOwlVocabulary, Foaf, ExtraInterop, RdfExistingVocabs, ExtensibilityFramework, SpotOfDrama
[JoeGregorio] I'm glad to see this page appear also. While I am well known for being averse to the XML serialization of RDF, I firmly believe there is need for translators for Echo -> RDF.
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+1 [MarkPilgrim]
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+1 [PhillipPearson]
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+1 [JeremyGray] It's also worth pointing out that most people (including many staunch RDF pundits, myself included) are adverse to the poor XML serialization of RDF. The RDF/XML specification allows for a signficant amount of short-handing which has been designed to make the resulting XML more concise, easier to write and understand, and more in line with (and therefore easier to integrate with) traditional XML. Its a shame that most RDF-based systems haven't put more effort into the quality of their RDF/XML serialization.
[SeanPalmer][RefactorOk] "It should be stated that use of Echo namespaces within RDF is a recognized usage." - Then Echo namespaces shouldn't use the same namespace + localName terms with different semantics for elements and attributes, or document context. I.e. <echo:blargh> and echo:blargh="" should mean the same thing so that RDF people can use the echo namespace plus "blargh" as a URI for just one concept. A minor point, but it can happen (xhtml:title, for example).
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+1 [DannyAyers]
[SjoerdVisscher] I will provide an XR document to extract as much RDF information as possible from Echo documents. (XR documents can be converted to XSLT stylesheets too) I am providing an online service for XR transformations.
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Sjoerd - great! If Echo is done properly it should be possible to extract every piece of info from the Echo version into RDF, and likewise to go the other way, i.e. round-trip through XSLT.
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[JonathanSmith] A possible test could be Image Description.
If there should be anything RDFish in Echo, it would have to be giving URIs to as much things as possible, if possible using the same syntax when doing so.
[Frank Ruscica] Is there any relationship between FOAF and Echo? Thanks kindly for any insight.
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Some, mostly as a reference to a Foaf instance for an author, just as with a reference to a weblog, site, or email address. One or two comments about identity as well. Do a full text search for 'foaf'.
I don't think there's yet a more direct link, but I expect FOAF will be one of the first "universally-supported and -defined extensions" that Ben Trott referred to.
I'd like to include notes on how FOAF integrates with RSS1, RSS2 and Echo in the FOAF spec. Obviously its much easier for the RSS1 case because both languages live on Planet RDF. But it should be possible to work out something for embedding islands of FOAF and RDF in non-RDF XML such as Echo. I've started some on this w.r.t. RSS2 over on their weblog, but it probably could do with moving into Wiki space to continue. --danbri (FOAF spec co-author)