POWDER Fix on wdrs:describedby (was Re: 200 OK with Content-Location might work)

On 06/11/2010 16:25, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
[snip]

> In addition, I think we've also triggered a POWDER fix that's been long
> overlooked.

And I'm grateful that it's come to my attention (wish I'd recognised the 
problem a lot earlier :-()

I've made a proposal internally (at W3C) that I want to run past at 
least one or two of the former POWDER WG members to make sure they're 
happy (one in particular). If that goes as hoped then there could be an 
erratum published as soon as Monday (8th) that would be become part of 
an edited Recommendation before long (maybe in the new year).

Bottom line is that wdrs:describedby was intended to be semantically 
identical to @rel describedby, i.e. with no range restriction. Since the 
Recommendation and namespace doc in the their present form are ambiguous 
it's clearly an error so making an entry on the errata page [1] is 
pretty straightforward. Once that's done there'll be a bit of outreach 
work to do on that. Getting the actual Rec edited takes a bit more 
'process' but it's doable. (Fundamental rule about docs published in TR 
space at w3.org is that the bytes don't change. Editing means publishing 
a new version.)

I think the chances of there being an implementation that infers that 
the object of a wdrs:describedby predicate is a wdrs:Document is 
vanishingly small but, on the off chance anyone knows of such an 
implementation, please let me know.

(Incidentally, editing the Rec should also help us get the POWDER MIME 
type registered but that's orthogonal to the current discourse).

Phil

[1] http://www.w3.org/2007/powder/powder-errata

-- 


Phil Archer
W3C Mobile Web Initiative
http://www.w3.org/Mobile

http://philarcher.org
@philarcher1

Received on Saturday, 6 November 2010 23:12:45 UTC