I'm still not clear about the discussion we had yesterday.

Steve Bate

@evan I'm not exactly clear about the analogy, but maybe someday we'll say that's how it worked in ActivityPub up until version 2.0!

Evan Prodromou

@steve early versions of RSS were based on RDF/XML. Version 2.0 is not. People parsed it as plain XML.

Evan Prodromou

@steve also, you don't have to wait for some imaginary future version. If you want to change ActivityPub, make extensions. It's really easy, and if your extension gets popular, it will get merged into the main AS2 context.

Evan Prodromou

@steve it's no longer up to you or me. The AS2 spec was standardized in 2018 and AP in 2019. We have hundreds of implementations, tens of thousands of servers, and tens of millions of user accounts.

Evan Prodromou

@steve there's no latitude at all to change the primary serialization format for AS2. JSON-LD meets all our needs, anyway.

Evan Prodromou

@steve so, I did a gist that I think represents your original point, namely, that regardless of whether the object is represented as a JSON object or an URL in the `items` property array value of an AS2 `Collection`, the triple generated to represent the relationship of containment is the same. Is that roughly it?

Converting an AS2 collection from JSON-LD to n-quads

Converting an AS2 collection from JSON-LD to n-quads - collection1a.jsonld

Gist (gist.github.com)

Evan Prodromou

@steve I can definitely agree with that, although it gets more complicated with paged collections. For AS2 and AP, this also shows a single note in a collection, but the RDF is not the same.

Paged collection

Paged collection. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

Gist (gist.github.com)

Steve Bate

@evan Yes, that’s essentially it. The AS2 Collection paging is a whole other discussion. The RDF triples are accurately representing what’s in the page-related JSON-LD, but the JSON-LD isn’t literally serializing one item in a Collection. It’s serializing a Collection referencing a CollectionPage (via `first`) that references one item (which is consistent with the RDF triples).

Evan Prodromou

@steve the note is contained in the collection in all three examples. That's the abstract model. I agree, the RDF is different.

Steve Bate

@evan Right, the RDF differs because the Collection's JSON-LD serialization is different in the paged serialization. I'd prefer that the Collection representation wouldn't change for paging, but I know that's another aspect of AS2 that will not change. Linked Data Platform (LDP) Paging describes a different way that doesn't couple the Collection and page representations so tightly. IIRC, they use Link headers for page refs and transient objects (in AP terms) for pages. https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/ldpwg/raw-file/default/ldp-paging.html

Evan Prodromou

@steve it's neat. I can't remember why we decided not to use LDP collections.

naturzukunft

@evan @steve is there in the meanwhile s way to geht it without abo? Will there be a print version?

Evan Prodromou

@naturzukunft @steve if you want one, please contact O'Reilly. We're doing ebook only at first, but they said if there's enough interest they'll do a print book. So please let them know!

naturzukunft

@evan @steve

done!

naturzukunft

@evan @steve

Question:
Hi there, i would like to order the ActivityPub by Evan Prodromou ISBN: 9781098169466 as print version. Is this possible ?

Answer:
Hi Fred,
Thanks for contacting us. Unfortunately, this title has been canceled and can't be ordered. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Kind regards,
Paul | Senior Customer Support

Evan Prodromou

@naturzukunft @steve Wow, what a crazy response!