Re: silly question about rdf:about

On Sun, 7 Apr 2002, Dave Beckett wrote:

> >>>Aaron Swartz said:
> > While you're at it, please replace rdf:Description with rdfs:Resource so
> > that it uses the same typedNode construction as everything else.
>
> but that is totally redundant; since all nodes are implicitly of type
> resource by the RDF Schema rules.
>
> You need a simple way to say "here is a node, no more types known
> apart from the implicit resource one" which is rdf:Description.
> Changing that form gives no substantial user benefit.
>
> See http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-grammar/#section-Syntax
> for examples of such things using non-'rdf:type'd nodes.

Your argument can be flipped around: having a separate, syntax only
construct, rdf:Description, adds only confusion and complexity. Every
rdf:Description element implicitly tells us about some Resource, so we
might reasonable remove (or downplay in examples etc.) rdf:Description,
since it adds nothing to the syntax except for the need to be explained.

I'm not saying we *should* drop it, only that I try to avoid it when
writing RDF/XML.

Dan