On RDDL: cool! some ideas requests for help

RDDL looks pretty cool... I wanna try it out on,
say, http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace to
point to stuff like the XML schema we've developed
for it; it needs an update w.r.t. XML 2nd ed anyway.

The way the terms in RDDL are grounded
in URI space is excellent. For example, it facilitates
translation to RDF. The grounding of MIME types
in the IANA registry-in-the-web is cool too.
(I think this approach of using souped-up HTML
for smart documents is cool; see, for example,
  HyperRDF: Using XHTML Authoring Tools with XSLT to produce RDF Schemas
  http://www.w3.org/2000/07/hs78/
  Sun, 13 Aug 2000 04:08:38 GMT )

But I don't see enough examples to make me confident
that I can do the upgrade of the XHTML document
currently at http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace conversion
myself. (or maybe I'm just tired/lazy ;-)

Anybody wanna tutor me thru it?

By the way... RDDL looks familiar... see:

  HTML Resource element
  http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Resource/Specification
  Mon, 09 Dec 1996 02:46:45 GMT

which captures some pre-RDF ramblings on metadata. (if you guys
knew about that spec when you designed RDDL, please
acknowledge it with a link.)

It's cited from

  Web Architecture: Generic Resources
  TBL, 1996, 2000
  http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Generic.html
  Fri, 08 Sep 2000 21:17:54 GMT

which reminds me... there's a connection to
HTTP's format negotiation semantics 
  http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec12.html#sec12
that I'd like to see specified. Hm... gotta
noodle on that...


Another comment... regarding:

	This document defines the syntax and semantics of
	the Resource Directory Description Language,
	and also serves as a Resource Directory Description
	for the namespace http://www.rddl.org/.

	-- http://www.openhealth.org/RDDL/20010122/rddl-20010122.html

That says "*the* syntax and semantics"; which, when taken
literally, suggests that there shall never be another syntax/semantics
associated with this namespace. Is that what you meant to say?
Or do you reserve the right to revise the syntax and
semantics associated with that namespace name? If so
(and I suspect this is the case), please document the
persitence/change policy for that namespace; for example
policies, please see:

  URIs for W3C namespaces
  http://www.w3.org/1999/10/nsuri
  Thu, 21 Dec 2000 18:41:28 GMT

especially the section

  Template policy
  http://www.w3.org/1999/10/nsuri#Template

A simple policy like

	subject to change without notice

suffices, though I suspect something more like

	The specification of this namespace is subject
	to change; in the case of substantive change,
	the editors intend to notify the
	users of this technology via the xml-dev forum at least
	one week in advance.

is what you want. You might add news:comp.text.xml
as a change notice forum for redundancy.

If you're aware of any sort of changes to the spec that
would motivate you to choose a new namespace name,
(e.g. backwards-incompatible changes, etc.)
please point those out too.


[Feel free to forward this message to xml-dev; I still
haven't figured out how to subscribe to it without my
inbox becoming unmanageable. Sorry. I do try
to read the archives now and again, especially
when xmlhack.com etc. highlights something. If the maintainers
have some way of giving me posting privileges without
delivering all the mail to me, that would make
my life easier.]

-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Thursday, 1 February 2001 03:35:26 UTC