N3 syntax in XHTML 2 [was RE: DC in XHTML2]

Hi Sjoerd,

> Mark Birbeck wrote:
> > Personally I would prefer to see a syntax for URIs that copes with 
> > both QNames and URIs in the same attribute--it's what I'd 
> hoped when I 
> > first started work on RDF/A, and is in effect what N3 does. Then it 
> > ceases to be the responsibility of the mark-up, and moves 
> to the realm 
> > of the attribute processing.
> 
> Why not actually adopt N3 for HTML?
> Then the about, rel, rev, property, role and resource 
> attributes can either be a qname, or a uri inside <>, or a 
> literal or an anonymous node etc.

I'd always hoped it would be possible to come up with a syntax that would do
this. The problem with using N3 specifically is that it uses '<' and '>' on
URIs, which does get a bit awkward in XML documents--but I do agree with you
that the principle is there.

One possibility would be to adorn QNames instead, with some characters that
are not from the set of valid URI characters. An example might be:

  href="[x:y]"

since '[' and ']' are in the 'excluded' characters list. (Other characters
in that list are '{' and '}' but I think they should be saved for attribute
value templates, as used in XSLT.)

Another possibility would be to use some XPointer syntax, such as:

  href="#qname(x:y)"

Anyway, the main point I think is that it must be possible to do this
somehow, and avoid the 'attribute explosion' that will happen if we have a
QName equivalent for each URI attribute.

Regards,

Mark


Mark Birbeck
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Received on Thursday, 9 June 2005 23:39:28 UTC