Re: @resource (was Re: Renaming target attribute of submission)

Hi John,

I have to disagree with you. :)


> This attribute refactoring seems to be getting a little out of hand, eh?

Well...ok...I don't disagree with that bit.


> The concern with 'target', which I still don't entirely agree is a problem
> but will let rest, is that it could be reused in the future to mean
> something different *within the submission element*.

That's not the issue. The problem is that @target is defined in XHTML
modularisation. So if we want XForms to work with M12N we need to be
careful about attribute clashes. (And I believe we agreed a long time
ago that having XForms work as an M12N-compatible module was a
desirable goal.)


> RDFa injects metadata on an element from the outside, which appears to be
> different than what happens with *local* attributes.
>
> RDFa needs to have a prefixing methodology so that its contributions can be
> distinguished from the local attributes of an element.  This can be done
> with actual XML namespaces or, in scenarios where XML namespaces are not...
> preferred, by pseudo-namespacing with a dash-separated prefix such as rdfa-

RDFa is a 'first class citizen' of XHTML M12N, and as such is part of
the XHTML namespace. It's essentially part of XHTML, and is already
being used by a number of different (big) organisations in XHTML
documents. So again, we're left with the same point as before--if we
want XForms to fit into this ecosystem, we need to watch out for
clashes.

(And I have argued before that we should aim to make XForms a 'first
class citizen' of M12N, too; when working on M12N with Shane, we made
some substantial changes to the M12N schemas in order to accomadate
this.)


> The resource attribute is a case in point for why it is RDFa that needs
> modification.  XForms 1.1 is already in CR, and the implementability of the
> attribute when named resource is not in question.  But more importantly, we
> used the name resource for consistency with the load action, which has been
> part of a W3C Recommendation since 2003.  Still more, we got the name from
> XLink.  Surely, the name in XForms should be allowed to stand...

That may be true, and I guess you could raise this as a last call
comment on RDFa. But whilst I argued your case in relation to your
last call comment about @instanceof -- even though I disagreed with
you :) -- you'd be on your own on this one. The reason is that I think
the RDF use of 'resource' is simply so fundamental that I can't see it
being changed in RDFa.

I agree it's a shame that this hasn't come up before, particularly
considering that XHTML 2 contains RDFa and XForms, which therefore
means that it contains @resource twice...but none of us spotted that.
:(

Regards,

Mark

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Received on Tuesday, 29 April 2008 16:49:25 UTC