XFN vs. FOAF
by Bijan Parsia
In the spirit of my post on DabbleDB and Exhibit, here’s another somewhat arbitrary match up in the newborn category “puerile comparisons”.
XFN (“XHTML Friends Network”) is not obviously pronoucable, where as FOAF leaps trippingly off the tongue.
XFN is a microformat; FOAF is an RDF vocabulary.
XFN is parasitic on/integrted with HTML; FOAF generally isn’t (though you can probably do stuff with RDFa nowadays).
Both seem like minomers: XFN isn’t especially XHTML oriented or limited. FOAF doesn’t have any specific vocabulary for describing friends.
FOAF represents all sorts of information about a person (i.e., subsumes a lot of vCard functionality); XFN is just about relationships (with either half of the relationship left implicit).
I only really noticed XFN because my HTML editor of experimentation (the Nvu family) has nice support on it. So when I put in a link to a person’s homepage, I’m inclined to add a little XFN. I don’t maintain a FOAF file.
Hmm. I wonder why the FOAF empire hasn’t tried to absorb the XFN conceptual structure.
A slick Exhibit template for FOAF data that actually gave me a nice looking and flexible homepage might well tempt me.
March 15th, 2007 at 4:59 am
“I wonder why the FOAF empire hasn’t tried to absorb the XFN conceptual structure” – the FOAF empire as in the Semantic Web? It’s not sewn together yet, but check XFN on the GRDDL and RELATIONSHIP: A vocabulary for describing relationships between people.
March 15th, 2007 at 4:59 am
“I wonder why the FOAF empire hasn’t tried to absorb the XFN conceptual structure” – the FOAF empire as in the Semantic Web? It’s not sewn together yet, but check XFN on the GRDDL and RELATIONSHIP: A vocabulary for describing relationships between people.
March 15th, 2007 at 5:24 am
No, I mean the FOAF empire as in FOAF per se. FOAF files, FOAF tools, etc. etc. Even the canonical FOAF spec. I don’t see a link on the FOAF project site to any of these things. Perhaps someone should update the FOAF wiki page on extensions? And why is that on the developers page instead of also on the user oriented pages?
RELATIONSHIP seems like it would be a reasonable canonical extension….except “ambivelentOf”? Yick.
(FOAF-a-matic is still oriented toward a separate FOAF file rather than generating useful web pages.)
March 15th, 2007 at 5:24 am
No, I mean the FOAF empire as in FOAF per se. FOAF files, FOAF tools, etc. etc. Even the canonical FOAF spec. I don’t see a link on the FOAF project site to any of these things. Perhaps someone should update the FOAF wiki page on extensions? And why is that on the developers page instead of also on the user oriented pages?
RELATIONSHIP seems like it would be a reasonable canonical extension….except “ambivelentOf”? Yick.
(FOAF-a-matic is still oriented toward a separate FOAF file rather than generating useful web pages.)
March 15th, 2007 at 6:59 am
“I wonder why the FOAF empire hasn’t tried to absorb the XFN conceptual structure” – the FOAF empire as in the Semantic Web? It’s not sewn together yet, but check XFN on the GRDDL and RELATIONSHIP: A vocabulary for describing relationships between people.
March 15th, 2007 at 7:24 am
No, I mean the FOAF empire as in FOAF per se. FOAF files, FOAF tools, etc. etc. Even the canonical FOAF spec. I don’t see a link on the FOAF project site to any of these things. Perhaps someone should update the FOAF wiki page on extensions? And why is that on the developers page instead of also on the user oriented pages?
RELATIONSHIP seems like it would be a reasonable canonical extension….except “ambivelentOf”? Yick.
(FOAF-a-matic is still oriented toward a separate FOAF file rather than generating useful web pages.)