Re: HTML+RDFa intro: examples before history, please

On Fri, 2010-04-23 at 11:51 -0400, Manu Sporny wrote:
> On 04/22/2010 11:56 AM, Paul Cotton wrote:
[...]
> 
> The current plan is that RDFa Core will contain the bulk of the
> language-agnostic examples and processing rules, and that thin
> specifications will align RDFa Core to each implementation language
> (XHTML, HTML, SVG, ODF, etc.). If one were to visualize this as a
> standard "spec stack", it would look like this:
> 
> +------------+-----------+----------+----------+
> | XHTML+RDFa | HTML+RDFa | SVG+RDFa | ODF+RDFa |
> +------------+-----------+----------+----------+
> |                 RDFa Core 1.1                |
> +----------------------------------------------+
> 
> Does this e-mail help explain some of the design decisions that the RDFa
> Working Group and HTML WG have assumed while authoring these
> specifications? Can you live with these design decisions?

I can live with it, but I think you're shooting yourself in the
foot if the HTML+RDFa spec doesn't at least start in a self-explanatory
way with a handful of examples.

> We needed to do this to reduce and eliminate
> duplication of text between specifications - that being a priority
> because when you repeat the same things in different specs the
language
> almost inevitably gets out of sync and causes interoperability issues.

"need" and "eliminate" are absolutes, but it's a trade-off;
even "almost inevitably" seems like overstating the case, based
on my experience.

I realize it's work to manage that risk, but I strongly suggest
that the work is worth doing.

Just put the examples in the test suite and automate a check
that they stay in sync.

> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-rdfa-primer/
> [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-core/
> [3] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-rdfa/
> [4]
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-comments/2010Apr/0066.html
> 


-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
gpg D3C2 887B 0F92 6005 C541  0875 0F91 96DE 6E52 C29E

Received on Friday, 23 April 2010 17:32:35 UTC