A problem RE: Dereferencing SKOS Core

Hi all,

We have a problem currently in that we are about to publish a document called the 'SKOS Core Vocabulary Specification' as a W3C working draft, which when published will probably get a URL something like ...

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-skos-core-spec-yyyymmdd/


The problem is that we have a document at the URL ...

[2] http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core/spec/


... which is also called the 'SKOS Core Vocabulary Specification', and which has the publication status of an 'editor's draft' (and will stay that way).

The document at [1] will not be the same as the document at [2], primarily because currently we update [2] whenever there has been a change to the underlying RDF decription of SKOS Core, whereas we can only ever update [1] via the W3C working group review procedure, and secondarily because they have different publication status.

So what I'm saying is that we have two different documents, but we refer to them both as 'the SKOS Core Vocabulary Specification'.  Explaining the relationship between the two is hard, and what we have in the latest draft at [3] (which is intended to end up at [1]) in the introduction is far from clear I think (snipped text):

'Because the SKOS Core Vocabulary may change (see Change Policy Statement below), there may be inconsistencies between this document and the SKOS Core Vocabulary RDF/OWL description. The latest version of <a href="http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core/spec/">the SKOS Core Vocabulary Specification</a> should accurately reflect the current state of the SKOS Core Vocabulary RDF/OWL description, although there still may on occasion be short periods (eg. during Web site publication) during which there are minor inconsistencies.'

I have a suggestion: we make the resource http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core content negotiable.  If a client asks for 'text/html' then the resource serves up some html that carries the title 'SKOS Core Vocabulary Namespace Document'.  If the client asks for 'application/rdf+xml' then they get what they currently get, which some RDF/XML.  

Then we could recast the above paragraph in the spec as:

'Because the SKOS Core Vocabulary may change (see Change Policy Statement below), there may be inconsistencies between this document and the SKOS Core Vocabulary RDF/OWL description. The <a href="http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core">the SKOS Core Namespace Document</a> should accurately reflect the current state of the SKOS Core Vocabulary, although there still may on occasion be short periods (eg. during Web site publication) during which there are minor inconsistencies.'

I can implement the content negotiation, I tried today with another resource.  With this setup it is then implied that the html you get from http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core is consistent with the rdf/xml you get from the same resource via a GET request with different 'accept' field.

The area under http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core/spec/ can then just become an editor's draft area for what is intended to end up at [1].

I'm not sure how people feel about the 'namespace document' title - that's copied from FOAF & XML conventions.  I'd be happy to hear other suggestions.

In general (and if you've managed to read this far thanks very much :) what do you think?

Cheers,

Al.

[3] http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core/spec/2005-03-11  


---
Alistair Miles
Research Associate
CCLRC - Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Building R1 Room 1.60
Fermi Avenue
Chilton
Didcot
Oxfordshire OX11 0QX
United Kingdom
Email:        a.j.miles@rl.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)1235 445440



> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-esw-thes-request@w3.org
> [mailto:public-esw-thes-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Charles
> McCathieNevile
> Sent: 20 March 2005 23:57
> To: Miles, AJ (Alistair); public-esw-thes@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Dereferencing SKOS Core
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 13:25:40 -0500, Miles, AJ (Alistair)  
> <A.J.Miles@rl.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> > To put things back the way they were ...
> > If anyone thinks this isn't the way to go (and I know best 
> practice here  
> > is still fuzzy)
> > then let me know.
> 
> > Also, I think I know enough about Apache HTTP server 
> content negotiation  
> > to implement some
> > simple content negotiation functionality for the resource  
> > http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/

> > core (I'd do it via a directive in .htaccess that rewrote 
> the URL such  
> > that a .var file
> > got invoked, which then supplied representations according to the  
> > requested content-type) -
> >  but should content-types other than application/rdf+xml be 
> available,  
> > and if so which?
> 
> Well, I guess that an RDF and an HTML version are the obvious 
> things to  
> put there.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Chaals
> 
> -- 
> Charles McCathieNevile                      Fundacion Sidar
> charles@sidar.org   +61 409 134 136    http://www.sidar.org

> 
>

Received on Monday, 21 March 2005 19:18:09 UTC