Re: Dublin Core prefixes in OA

On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 10:42:59AM -0700, Robert Sanderson wrote:
> So, if terms:format "text/html" and terms:language "en" are (somehow,
> please explain?) possible, then I would be happy to stop using elements,
> and use dc for terms.  On the other hand, as we currently make much greater
> use of elements than terms, I'm not in favor of the change as the model
> stands.  It's "just a prefix" but it's a commonly used and understood one.
...
> ... we have many occurrences of dc11:format, some
> of dc11:language, and a few of dc:conformsTo.  I should clarify that I'm
> not against it either, I'm just not in favour of a "face trade" that
> introduces potential confusion downstream for adopters and implementers
> unless there is some gain to outweigh that.
...
> If we're going to change the way in which these predicates are *perceived*,
> and it's possible to avoid a not-quite-deprecated ontology, then I think we
> should fix it all the way through.  Thus my query about using terms:format
> and terms:language.

If I understand the situation, the correct properties would be:

    http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/format
    http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/language
    http://purl.org/dc/terms/conformsTo

because 

    http://purl.org/dc/terms/format
    http://purl.org/dc/terms/language

are not supposed to be used with literal objects.  In practice, I'm sure that
in the wild, they are used ("incorrectly") with literal objects, but that is
another matter.  I do not think of /elements/1.1/ as "not-quite-deprecated"
because it remains quite popular, perhaps indeed because it is looser.

I cite them here with full URIs to avoid any confusion with the prefix issue
and note that the "element" (or /elements/) and "term" (/terms/) variants above
are all properties.  The only explanation I can offer for this confusing state
of affairs is historical: Dublin Core began in 1995 as "elements" two years
before work began on RDF at W3C, and the best catch-all label we could think of
in 1999 for a namespace of properties, classes, and (at the time) "encoding
schemes" was "terms".

Tom

-- 
Tom Baker <tom@tombaker.org>

Received on Wednesday, 15 January 2014 22:39:15 UTC