RDFa Primer WD#2 Ready - Addressing Gary's Comments from WD#1

Gary,

The Primer is ready for you to review at:
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/HTML/2006-04-24-rdfa-primer

(you'll need a Mozilla-based browser to see it, as it's XML with XSLT).

Though I already responded to your comments earlier [1], I wanted to  
point out exactly which ones we incorporated into the latest draft  
and how. I've tried not to repeat too much of [1].

-Ben

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swbp-wg/2006Jan/0085


> 1) Overall Organization
> =======================
>
> Would it be beneficial for the reader to have some brief  
> introduction on
> basic constructs, before diving into how they are used in the use  
> case?

We introduced and significantly reworked Section 2, which we think  
addresses this concern.

[...]
>     - "How about annotating tables, frames, forms and dynamic content
> from scripts producing menus and flash?"

We don't have examples of this kind only because these are more  
advanced, but we hope to integrate at least form annotation before  
this Primer goes to W3C Note status.

>     - "How do I create chains of triples?" For example, an address  
> of a
> person (Mark in the example), represented by an annoymous node,  
> which in
> turn has statements specifying triples making up the address.

We will probably not address this in the Primer, as the it is mostly  
directed at HTML authors for whom "a chain of triples" is likely not  
the first topic they have in mind. That said, we certainly hope that  
interested readers will continue to the RDFa syntax, which will be  
normative in XHTML2, as you noticed:

[...]

> ------------------------------
>
> 1.1) In the preliminaries, the following sentence may provide some
> initial context to the reader.
>
>      "An XHTML document marked up with RDF/A constructs is a valid  
> XHTML
> Document. RDF/A is about using XHTML compatible constructs and
> extensions to specify RDF 'content'. It is not about embedding RDF
> syntax into XHTML documents."
>
> ------------------------------

We've added such a paragraph.

[...]

> 1.3 Perhaps the primer should be arranged with a target reader in  
> mind.
> For example, to arrange from the point of view of an HTML author  
> wanting
> to find out how to add annotations to his/her docs, in the quickest  
> time
> possible.

[... description of what an HTML author might want to do ...]

The new section 2 should address this well.

[...]

> 2) RDF/A itself.
> =============================
>
> I must say at first glance I found the approach extremely confusing.

Let us know if this new version helps make it less so :)

We did not address a number of the issues in this section, as we want  
to keep RDFa simple, and not try to resolve issues that may be  
general to all RDF serializations.

However, we did more thinking about issue 2.4, with IMAGE and OBJECT  
elements. Currently, we believe that the SRC attribute designates an  
object, not a subject, of a triple. It is, in fact, much like href.  
For example, "this is my foaf:img" is:

<img rel="foaf:img" src="ben.jpg" />

Note also that we cannot rely too much on what's inside the <img>  
element, as that is only supposed to be rendered when loading the  
image fails.

To use the SRC as a subject, one could use the REV property.

More on this on our issues list:
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/HTML/2005-current-issues#src

Note also that we *do* want to add additional examples, like form  
annotation, before we go final with this note.

-Ben

Received on Wednesday, 26 April 2006 14:31:25 UTC