Re: Request to reopen ISSUE-120 rdfa-prefixes

On 04/13/2011 01:46 PM, Nathan wrote:
> Sam Ruby wrote:
>> On 04/13/2011 10:46 AM, Henri Sivonen wrote:
>>> On Tue, 2011-04-12 at 08:31 -0400, Sam Ruby wrote:
>>>> On 04/09/2011 08:39 PM, Sam Ruby wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Additionally we would find the following to be "sufficiently novel":
>>>>> multiple first hand statements from people who are implementing
>>>>> distinct
>>>>> large scale RDFa consuming tools on how they would prefer to proceed.
>>>>
>>>> While I have previously made the point that rehashing, re-questioning,
>>>> re-clarifying, etc. "old information" is now off topic for this mailing
>>>> list; I want to now make it clear that any and all discussion
>>>> (additional supporting evidence, rebuttals, requests for clarification,
>>>> etc) relating to "new information" are welcome here. I furthermore wish
>>>> to actively encouraged people aware of such new information to post it
>>>> here in order to enable everybody to fully participate in the
>>>> discussion.
>>>>
>>>> At the present time, I am aware of the following:
>>>>
>>>> http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20110411#l-573
>>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2011Apr/0062.html
>>>
>>> The IRC log line you refer to contains a link to
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-in-xhtml-tf/2009Sep/0126.html
>>>
>>>
>>> Since my response to the objection poll on ISSUE-120 included the above
>>> URL, a Chair considering it "new information" is rather odd. Frankly, it
>>> makes me feel that my objection hasn't been processed properly. I'm
>>> disappointed.
>>
>> I will agree that the quality of this item alone as "new information"
>> is borderline at best; but we have indicated that we would be willing
>> to evaluate it as a part of a larger package.
>>
>> I will further note that your objection was evaluated in the context
>> of the only proposals which actually were brought forward:
>>
>> http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Change_Proposal_for_ISSUE-120
>> http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/RDFaPrefixesNoChange
>>
>>> However, despite my disappointment, I'd be happy to see the Chairs
>>> reconsider the ISSUE in the light of the "new" information of both a
>>> Google engineer and a Facebook engineer expressing that their
>>> implementations intentionally deviate from the RDFa spec in a way
>>> relevant to the ISSUE.
>>
>> My suggestion to that those who are interested in pursuing this work
>> is to close the gap between "intentionally deviate" and "actively
>> support the specific change proposal that you put forward".
>> Identifying a number of tools that "intentionally deviate" and do so
>> in a consistent way would be borderline new information. Going further
>> and identifying that they actively support something which nobody
>> fleshed out and actively proposed previously... that would be a much
>> easier case to make.
>
> Indeed, and for the time being it seems clear to me (at least) that this
> is a simple case of following the robustness principle / Postel's Law:
>
> Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept.
>
> Do they advise to send the prefix declaration, yes, do they require it
> when consuming, no. The likes of Facebook/Opengraph are only concerned
> with consuming their own og:/fb: data at the moment, if or when a time
> comes that they wish to consider other RDFa data too, then the prefix
> declarations will become far more important to their consuming software.

I read this as "respect the prefix declaration if present, otherwise 
recover in a predictable manner".  For now, I will simply note that this 
is slightly different than what James originally outlined[1]:

> Tools processing RDFa in HTML MUST NOT use any in-document mechanism
> to bind prefixes to URIs, but instead MUST only recognise prefixes as
> they are registered

Either or both approaches can be proposed should this issue be reopened, 
but I will encourage people to work together to converge on as few 
proposals as is practical, and for any such proposal be consistent with 
the new information that is provided.

In short, is there any evidence that there is "a path by which reality 
can be made to match"[2] what James outlined?  I.e., is this something 
that tool builder would be willing to do?  Or would they prefer what 
Nathan has outlined above?

> Best,
>
> Nathan

- Sam Ruby

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2011Apr/0153.html
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2011Apr/0154.html

Received on Wednesday, 13 April 2011 18:13:49 UTC