Re: Please Don't Use the Name "@prefix"

Hello Doug, Ben all

Doug Schepers wrote:
> Hi, folks-
>
> Ben Adida wrote (on 7/16/09 1:03 PM):
>>
>> Here's my proposed alternative: use RDF/OWL for vocabulary mappings, and
>> add to RDFa only the ability to declare a default prefix.
>>
>> Markup in the page:
>>
>> <div about="#me" prefix="http://myvocab.org/#">
>>    My name is<span property="name">Ben Adida</span>
>
> Sorry to bikeshed about this so early, but please reconsider the name 
> for the attribute @prefix.  @prefix refers to the mechanism, not the 
> conceptual relation, and is not intuitive.  RDFa should be designed 
> for people coming from the HTML world, not from the RDF/SemWeb world.  
> If you want to give people a set of semantic attributes that will be 
> easy for them to learn, understand, and remember, you should name the 
> attributes according to their function, not their form.
>
> I suggest @context or @scope something similar,

or re-use something that already exists and make it into something at 
least useful, @profile

<div about="#me" profile="http://myvocab.org/#">
   My name is<span property="name">Ben Adida</span>

> because what the prefix does is to qualify a term according to a given 
> resource, right?
>
> I don't think most Web developers know the "namespace prefix" 
> terminology, and without that jargon, @prefix could mean pretty much 
> anything.

Developers understand what @profile is used for (well a bit more than a 
few anyway), and its also used (sometimes well OK then occasionally) by 
microformat authors.

I like this proposal a lot good work Mark and Ben call it RDFa Simple.

just my 2c ;)

Best Wishes

-- 
Martin McEvoy
http://weborganics.co.uk/

Received on Monday, 20 July 2009 01:11:38 UTC