Re: @about/@instanceof discussion

Ivan Herman wrote:
> Well, I can _express_ in XHTML+RDFa the issue above with Manu's rules,
> though by repeating a URI:
> 
> <img src="bla" rel="foaf:depiction"/><span about="bla" instanceof="a:b"/>
> 
> And, in fact, that is the point. I believe (no proof, though) that we
> _can_ express anything we really want in RDFa whichever way we move with
> @instanceof, and without going out of our way. There are edge cases, of
> course, but well... In this sense, choosing simplicity for the design is
> a good guideline, too:-)

Agreed. I think this matters less than all of us would like to believe. :)

However, I think Ben's point is that we should also choose something
that supports as many of the use cases as possible. We're attempting to
find a set of rules that accomplish the following goals:

* Support as many of the use cases as we can in an elegant fashion.
* Simplicity.
* Something that is easy for publishers to grasp.
* Something that the RDF community will like.

Some of those goals are in conflict with one another and I must admit
that I was deliberately not thinking of the use cases when I wrote up my
proposed rules. Ben has also stated that he thinks his rules are simple
as well, but in addition, they take the use cases into account.

One thing that the rules I proposed do is blow the simple @instanceof
chaining use case out of the water (at least, I'm pretty sure that it
does). I'm willing to make that sacrifice for a simpler set of rules,
but if Ben's rules are just as simple and they support that use case, we
should go with Ben's rules.

All in all, how we make this decision is becoming clearer (at least to
me, it is).

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny
President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Bitmunk Launches World's First Open Music Recommendation Service
http://blog.digitalbazaar.com/2007/09/09/bitmunk-music-recommendation/

Received on Friday, 2 November 2007 15:26:54 UTC