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

Hi Mark,

Supposing it could be changed, 

1) What do we change it to in <instance>
2) What do we change it to in <submission>
3) What do we do about <load>, which has had this attribute for a very 
long time.

Thanks,
John M. Boyer, Ph.D.
Senior Technical Staff Member
Lotus Forms Architect and Researcher
Chair, W3C Forms Working Group
Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software
IBM Victoria Software Lab
E-Mail: boyerj@ca.ibm.com 

Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/JohnBoyer
Blog RSS feed: 
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/rss/JohnBoyer?flavor=rssdw





"Mark Birbeck" <mark.birbeck@x-port.net> 
Sent by: public-forms-request@w3.org
04/29/2008 09:48 AM

To
John Boyer/CanWest/IBM@IBMCA
cc
"Forms WG" <public-forms@w3.org>, "Steven Pemberton" 
<steven.pemberton@cwi.nl>
Subject
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

-- 
 Mark Birbeck

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