RE: "scheme" attribute of META element

Ian,

There is a list of tools and software for use with Dublin Core data at http://www.dublincore.org/tools/. 

The Dublin Core metadata standard was designed as a scheme for identifying data for cataloguing documents and reducing that information to a small enough set of criteria that it would be practical to implement.  One straight-forward application for the data is cataloguing web documents in ways that are meaningful to professional librarians.

I believe that Dublin Core passes the test that you set out as not being "data that in practice nobody will ever use; we don't want to encourage people to spend time on something that will not actually ever help humanity."

In weighing the equities of keeping the "scheme" attribute of the META attribute (which is used in Dublin Core), I would urge you to consider that:
*	In setting up their standard, the folks at Dublin Core relied on § 7.4.4 of the W3C's HTML 4.01 Specification - which provides for the "scheme" attribute; and
*	Appendix C <http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/NOTE-UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20-20081211/appendixC.html>  of the W3C's Understanding WCAG 2.0 document identifies Dublin Core as one of three "[w]ell-known specifications (schemas) for metadata".

Thank you for your consideration.

		Elliot 
		Elliot Chabot, esq. 
		Chief for Web Design and Standards Compliance
		CAO Web Solutions Branch 
		U.S. House of Representatives 
		H2-646 Ford House Office Building 
		Washington, DC 20515-6165
		U.S.A. 
		1 (202) 226-6456 



-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Hickson [mailto:ian@hixie.ch] 
Sent: Friday, May 08, 2009 7:18 PM
To: Chabot, Elliot
Cc: public-html-comments@w3.org
Subject: RE: "scheme" attribute of META element

On Fri, 8 May 2009, Chabot, Elliot wrote:
> 
> We try to use Dublin Core-compliant metadata on all of our 
> publicly-facing web sites, including http://www.house.gov/.

Excellent, thanks. I will look at this closely.


> We do not consume the data, we produce it and put it out on the web so 
> that others can consume.

Are you aware of anyone who does consume this data?


> We encourage compliance with these type of standards even when there are 
> currently few (or even no) applications that make use of particular 
> features - on the theory that we are contributing to creating the 
> critical mass of standards-compliant data on the web that will make it 
> worthwhile for application designers to come forward and create the 
> applications that can make use of the data.

What kinds of applications do you envisage making use of this data?

In general HTML5 is being developed from a much more pragmatic 
perspective, starting from known problems or use cases and not from 
theoretical future uses. This is intended to discourage people (such as 
maybe yourself?) from including data that in practice nobody will ever 
use; we don't want to encourage people to spend time on something that 
will not actually ever help humanity.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'