[Bug 9647] New: Turn HTML+RDFa into a polyglot specification

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=9647

           Summary: Turn HTML+RDFa into a polyglot specification
           Product: HTML WG
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: PC
               URL: http://dev.w3.org/html5/rdfa/drafts/ED-rdfa-in-html-20
                    100502/#document-conformance
        OS/Version: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P3
         Component: HTML+RDFa (editor: Manu Sporny)
        AssignedTo: msporny@digitalbazaar.com
        ReportedBy: xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no
         QAContact: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org
                CC: mike@w3.org, public-html@w3.org,
                    xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no,
                    msporny@digitalbazaar.com


There is an effort to create a polyglot HTML5/XHTML5 spec:

http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-xhtml-author-guide/html-xhtml-authoring-guide

RDFa in HTML is a natural feature to specify in a polyglot way. And the
HTML+RDFa begins optimistically:

]]
This specification defines rules and guidelines for adapting the RDFa Core 1.1
specification for use in HTML5 and XHTML5. The rules defined in this
specification not only apply to HTML5 documents in non-XML and XML mode, but
also to HTML4 and XHTML documents interpreted through the HTML5 parsing rules.
[[

And it also has this concrete example, which seems like it could be valid both
in XHTML5 and in HTML5.

]]
An example of a conforming HTML+RDFa document:
<html version="HTML+RDFa 1.1" lang="en">
[[

But, alas,  another section talks about one HTML (text/html) way and another
XHTML way:

]]
There should be a version attribute on the html element. The value of the
version attribute should be "HTML+RDFa 1.1" if the document is a non-XML mode
document, or "XHTML+RDFa 1.1" if the document is a XML mode document.
[[

The *fails* to speak about the version attribute for HTML401+RDFa. Would it be
<html version="HTML 4.01+RDFa 1.1"> ?

There seems to be two options for turing HTML+RDFa into a polyglot spec:

EITHER: forbid all XHTML-isms (such as xmlns) in HTML5 documents that are *not*
polyglot (aka XHTML) documents.  (This means that HTML4+RDFa must be dropped.)

OR:  create a versioning mechanism which is independet of text/html vs
application/xhtml+xml. I don't know if this is possible or even desirable. But
regardless: by having a method which would work also in a polyglot spec, then
this option would be possible to deal with.

Other options:

XHTML 1.0+RDFa:
  A DTD for XHTML 1.0+RDFa seems much more relevant, than a DTD for
HTML401+RDFa. Both when we consider what authors (e.g. Facebook) actually do
but also because XHTML 1.0 is a defacto polyglot spec - the Appendix C section
of XHTML1.0 is permitted in the text/html serialization of HTML5.

An XHTML5+RDFa Doctype:
  Tools in the wild already *depends* on the doctype
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Apr/1204.html

 Therefore a DTD less XHTML5+RDFa doctype would also serve as input to the
versioning ISSUE of HTML5
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Jan/0015

Proposed DOCTYPE: 
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//XML XHTML5+RDFa 1.1//EN" "about:legacy-compat">

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Received on Monday, 3 May 2010 13:20:24 UTC