Re: IDs? and classes

Charles,

Are you suggesting something along the lines of <P 
class="http://foo.bar/definition.htm"> ?

That does not seem to be the most elegant way to do things.  Isn't there 
some way to use RDF?  Namespaces?  something else?  I agree that the URI is 
helpful for the person who want to find out about the semantics, but how 
would this be machine-understandable?

I like Marja's original idea of include ID's on elements.  ID's could be 
arbitrary and automatically generated for block elements.  Then, 
annotations could be attached to any element in the document.

--wendy

At 04:41 AM 6/12/00 , Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>Actually, in the context of the "semantic web", and RDF, I have a suggestion
>to make, which is that classes be used which are URIs - prefereably real
>ones. This would enable two things to happen:
>
>  1. An author could explain, at the URI in a dereferenceable document, what
>the class was about or for.
>
>  2. It would become more or less trivial to make RDF assertions about
>classes, and therefore about how to re-use existing ones rather than create
>new ones for each piece of content.
>
>In general, I am opposed to making a class if it can be avoided (for example,
>it is better to use the existing CODE element than to produce a style class
>for delineating code examples). In particular I would suggest that the
>semantics of map were not extended in HTML 4.01, merely the syntax, which was
>extended to match in the real world the semantics of the specification. But
>that is a trivial question I guess.
>
>cheers
>
>Charles McCN
>
>On Mon, 12 Jun 2000, Jason White wrote:
>
>   Interestingly, there has been significant resistance, within this working
>   group, to any attempt to provide common semantics to specific values of
>   the HTML CLASS attribute, either within the guidelines or techniques
>   documents. The basic rationale was that the semantics of CLASS values were
>   left completely unconstrained by the HTML specification and it was
>   desirable not to create an inconsistency, or apparent inconsistency,
>   between HTML 4.0 and the guidelines. It was also urged that content
>   developers should have total freedom in creating style sheets to use the
>   CLASS attribute as they wished.
>
>[and so on]

--
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
madison, wi usa
tel: +1 608 663 6346
/--