Re: Comments on XHTML Metainformation module 22 July WD

* Ralph R. Swick <swick@w3.org> [2004-09-06 20:45-0400]
> 
> Comments on http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-xhtml2-20040722/
> 
> I read only sections 19 Metainformation Attributes Module and
> 20 Metainformation Module and followed some of the references
> so if any of my questions are answered in other sections please
> accept my apologies and consider this a suggestion to add more
> cross-references.
> 
> Overall I am excited to see these two sections proposed for
> XHTML.  These two modules have the potential to permit integration
> of RDF graphs into XHTML documents in a way that should be a
> relatively small learning curve for XHTML users.  I am disturbed,
> however, by the lack of explicit connection to RDF semantics.  The
> module is eminently suited to expressing RDF semantics, and to use
> RDF to give precise interpretation of the semantics of the new
> XHTML vocabulary, but sadly this opportunity has not been taken.
> It ought to be straightforward to say that the URI that is the
> value of a property attribute corresponds to the URI that names
> an RDF property, that the URI that is the value of an about or
> resource attribute corresponds to the RDF subject and that the
> metadata value, whether specified by the content attribute or
> by element content, is the RDF object of a statement.  This would
> then make it possible to define a normative GRDDL [1] transform
> from this metadata syntax to an RDF graph.  I hope this can be
> rectified in a future Working Draft.

+1

I'd just add that one reason to make this connection, beyond avoiding
fiddly corner cases already studied in the RDF world, is to make it 
clear that there are a range of existing RDF vocabularies out there 
which can now be plugged straight in to XHTML2 documents. The pages at 
http://www.schemaweb.info/ ->
http://www.schemaweb.info/schema/BrowseSchema.aspx
...give a partial directory of these, and there are others in progress
(eg. work at icra.org to migrate their content labelling efforts to have
an RDF representation).

cheers,

Dan

Received on Tuesday, 7 September 2004 02:47:44 UTC