New draft of W3C TAG Finding on the Self-Describing Web

I am pleased to announce the publication of a new draft of a TAG finding 
titled "The Self-Describing Web" [1,2].  We have a discussion of this 
topic scheduled at our F2F next week.  I have editied the draft agenda [3] 
to provide links to this new version, as well as to some background 
material.

This redraft is, like several before it, intended to be nearly ready for 
publication, but there is one significant chapter with new material, and I 
won't be surprised if that requires some detailed review and subsequent 
revision.  I have attempted to address the significant issues raised in 
the review [5] of the previous draft in Kansas City, and I think the 
changes are in general for the better.  A diff from the previous version 
is at [4].  If you're short on time, I suggest reading the abstract, the 
introduction, and the new chapter 6 [6].  There are mostly isolated 
changes elsewhere.  Brief summary of key changes:

* As Tim suggested in KC, I have introduced a concept of representations 
being "grounded in the Web".  This is discussed some in the abstract and 
introduction sections, but primarily in a new chapter 6 that's entirely 
devoted to this concept.  See [6].  Tim:  does this capture the essence of 
what you were looking for?

* RDFa is now treated as being self-describing via RFC 3023, following the 
model we resolved to use in the KC discussions.  The RDF/XML example has 
been retained, and the N3 version dropped, also as decided in KC.  I 
believe that the namespace document for XHTML [7] has been revised to 
provide for use of RDFa, so I've treated that as a done deal.

* As suggested by Jonathan Rees in KC, I clarified the sense in which the 
term "self-describing" is applied to representations.

* Miscellaneous cleanup, some of which was requested in Kansas City (e.g. 
drop unreferenced biblio items left from earlier drafts.)

Noah

[1] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/selfDescribingDocuments.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/selfDescribingDocuments-2008-12-03.html
[3] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2008/12/09-f2f-agenda#selfDescribingWeb
[4] 
http://www.w3.org/2007/10/htmldiff?doc1=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2001%2Ftag%2Fdoc%2FselfDescribingDocuments-2008-09-08.html&doc2=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2001%2Ftag%2Fdoc%2FselfDescribingDocuments-2008-12-03.html
[5] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2008/09/24-minutes#item01
[6] 
http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/selfDescribingDocuments-2008-12-03.html#grounding
[7] http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/

--------------------------------------
Noah Mendelsohn 
IBM Corporation
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
1-617-693-4036
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Received on Thursday, 4 December 2008 01:54:36 UTC