DCAT document/primer

I've added a suggestion for a session at the F2F to discuss how we handle the mix of content currently in the DCAT recommendation.  In producing the new working draft it became clear that we have a lot of material such as examples and associated narrative that isn't normative that demonstrates how the vocab can be used - essentially material that might turn up in a primer or perhaps a best practices document. (The 2014 Rec has some examples too, but nowhere near as many or even enough.  Several of our requirements are more about providing guidance/explanation than about formal normative vocabulary definition.  There is a view that readers are likely to be more influenced by the examples than the formal definitions]

This left us with a document structure problem - to get it under control we pushed some of the longer examples to an appendix (https://github.com/w3c/dxwg/issues/470). While this helps readability, there is a more general question about whether a separate non-Normative primer is something that we should produce - that would allow us to remove some aspects of non-normative information from the Recommendation itself, and - resourcing permitting - allows to develop a more dynamic document/website that could be updated and augmented in response to new uses, or new questions etc.

My suggestion for next week is we discuss (a) do we think there is a need (b) do we have some good ideas (and resources) to address this need.

To be clear, I'm aware this isn't one of our deliverables in the charter but the current mix of normative/non-normative info in the recommendation track DCAT specification has consequences, and it would be good to have an agreed approach to how we handle this - while this issue has been discussed within the DCAT sub-group, I think it's better that it is discussed at the Plenary level so we have a broad consensus view



David Browning
Platform Architect, Refinitiv


The Financial and Risk business of
Thomson Reuters is now Refinitiv<http://www.refinitiv.com/>

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