[georss] Why this syntax?

[Danny Ayers]

Sorry if I'm missing something in the docs, but I can't really see any
reason for opting for:

  <gml:Point>
      <gml:pos>45.256 -71.92</gml:pos>
   </gml:Point>

...syntax, when the

  <geo:Point>
    <geo:lat>45.256</geo:lat>
    <geo:long>-71.92</geo:long>
  </geo:Point>

...syntax is not only already "out there", but easier to parse using
XML tools (and no harder to create). With "valueA valueB valueC..."
it's necessary to micro-parse and determine what parameter each value
corresponds to, an unnecessary processing step.

Ok, I believe the space separated approach is that taken by GML, but
as you are talking about this vocabulary being deployed in RSS and
Atom, new ground, surely the options are still open.

To put it another way, why not:

<georss:geo>point 45.256 -71.92</georss:geo>

which also happens to be entirely extensible, e.g.:

<georss:geo>polygon 45.256 -110.45 46.46 -109.48 43.84 -109.86 45.8
-109.2</georss:geo>

One immediate reason for using XML at a more granular level is for
ease of use with RDF vocabularies (e.g. RSS 1.0). If the components
are separated, it would be possible to apply a SPARQL query to an RDF
model directly like this:

SELECT  ?blog ?latitude
WHERE   {
    ?blog geo:lat ?latitude .
    ?blog geo:lat ?longitude .
    FILTER (?latitude > 50 && ?longitude < -60) .
}

With the space-separated data, in the RSS 1.0 case you have the
slightly  bizarre situation where an otherwise directly
interpretable/queryable document would have to be transformed or have
some other kind of custom processing before anything useful can be
done with it.

Cheers,
Danny.


--

http://dannyayers.com