RDF Issue rdfms-xml-base

Ron,

In

     http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-rdfcore-wg/2001Jun/0097.html


you raised an issue which was captured in

   http://www.w3.org/2000/03/rdf-tracking/#rdfms-xml-base

as

[[[
The xml-base construct could be useful in defining the base of relative 
URI's in RDF.
]]]

As recorded in

   http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/RDFCore/20020225-f2f/#d-2002-02-25-4

the RDFCore WG has decided that it allow xml:base to affect the conversion 
of relative URI refernces to absolute URI references.

In particular it decided:

RFC 2396 states that self document references, such as rdf:about="", are 
not relative URI's are thus not subject to being converted to an absolute 
URI using xml:base.

It was also noted in section 4.2 of RFC 2396 it states:

   However, if the URI reference occurs in a context
   that is always intended to result in a new request,
   as in the case of HTML's FORM element, then an empty
   URI reference represents the base URI of the current
   document and should be replaced by that URI when
   transformed into a request.

It can be argued that this case should cover RDF's use of URI's.

The WG decided that RDF will convert such references to absolute URI's and 
will take in scope xml:base attributes into account in such conversions.

Specifically:

<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
          xmlns:eg="http://example.org/"
          xml:base="http://example.org/dir/file">
   <eg:type rdf:about="" />
</rdf:RDF>

is equivalent to:

   <http://example.org/dir/file> 
<http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type> 
<http://example.org/dir/file> .

Please could you respond to this message, copying www-rdf-comments@w3.org 
indicating whether this is an acceptable resolution of this issue.

Brian McBride
RDFCore co-chair