Re: Clarifying CURIEs [was Re: RDFa - Dublin Core Metadata - [Fwd: Draft of revised version of Expressing DC in X/HTML meta/link elements]]

Ivan Herman wrote:
> Niklas,
> 
> I share your uneasiness, and I agree that the acceptance of the
> rel="dc.creator" type of mechanism is less clean. But we have to face
> realities (and, with all my respect to Ian and eRDF, this has nothing to
> do with eRDF!). The fact of the matter is that the
> 
> <link rel="dc.copyright" href="blabla"/>
> 
> type of markup in HTML pages to include basic DC terms have become very
> widespread indeed. To take an example, this is what the W3C home page
> uses:-) Of course, those can (and are) understood and interpreted by
> GRDDL, but I think it would be a shame if an RDFa processed XHTML file
> did not understood those perfectly valid metadata or, as the DCMI
> document and mail I forwarded, the DCMI recommendations decided to
> ignore RDFa.

I don't know. We still get a *lot* of grief for RDF/XML having so many 
syntactic variants, which were added in 97/8 each for fine reasons. RDFa 
is already complex; the more we add, the harder it is going to be to 
learn. We always also have GRDDL to fall back on. Could GRDDL be 
involved by citing the XSLT from the documents that the link/rel/href 
constructs point to?

Before changing RDFa here, I'd like to know: 1. just how many documents 
are we talking about 2. how many of them are XHTML 3. whether the 
resulting RDF would be any good. For example, there is no such thing as 
dc:copyright or dc.copyright (dc:rights is the closest).

> Dublin Core is not the only metadata that uses this mechanism. For
> example, if I use OpenID, I am supposed to add the following <link>
> elements into my HTML header (that I can then use as my OpenID URI):
> 
> <link rel="openid.server" href="http://pip.verisignlabs.com/server" />
> <link rel="openid.delegate"
> href="http://ivanherman.pip.verisignlabs.com/" />
> 
> It would be a perfectly o.k. to have RDF statements on your page on
> openid, but we hit the same traditional data format!

It is (I guess, can't promise :) not too late for the OpenID community 
to adopt and evangelise a more modern syntax. But to be fair, RDFa isn't 
finished yet, so we can't blame them for using a more "traditional" format.

> However, there is an alternative to make the pill less bitter. We can:
> accept the 'dot notation' as an alternative to the 'coloumn notation' in
> the <head> only, ie, essentially for <link> and <meta> elements only.
> These would allow RDFa to include the traditional metadata formats.

The seems healthy (perhaps also mark it explicitly "for backwards 
compatibility" or even deprecated?
> 
> None of these create any implementation problem. As I am in an
> implementation mood these days:-) I could add these features to my
> implementation in about 30 minutes (with testing) without any particular
> problem, and a change to the alternative above would not be an issue
> either. But I do not think ignoring the issue is good for us.

Changes to parsers aren't the only cost. We also have to think about 
people learning to read this stuff. Any new rule is still a new rule.

cheers,

Dan

> My two pence...
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Ivan
> 
> 
> Niklas Lindström wrote:
>> Hello!
>>
>> This is regarding the alternative mechanisms of a "dot-notation"
>> shorthand and namespace binding by "schema.*" ("schema-dot"). It
>> really bakes my noodle. :)
>>
>> Doesn't this amount to the incorporation of eRDF into RDFa? While that
>> *may* be fortunate (since eRDF is in use today), something makes me
>> feel very uneasy about it. I think it introduces a bit of
>> arbitrariness at the core, which among other things (probably) makes
>> it harder to learn.
>>
>> In my opinion, eRDF is a competent but less powerful alternative to
>> RDFa, with different (though quite overlapping) sets of features and
>> trade-offs. Although eRDF works with HTML 4.01 and RDFa does not
>> (right?), which could merit this, I'd still like to stay on the XHTML
>> side of things. Having the current syntax for CURIEs and namespace
>> declarations as the only one is a big part of that IMHO.
>>
>> While having RDFa capable of coexisting with microformats (and eRDF)
>> is a goal, I see this as legacy compatibility (I would never mix them
>> if I could avoid it). If needed, GRDDL.
>>
>> What is left is how to handle e.g.:
>>
>>     <link rel="dc.creator" href="http://example.org/Fred" />
>>
>> I felt a little chill thinking about it (reminiscing the issues with
>> mingling of values in @class when it was the proposed rdf:type
>> shorthand). Would this lead to the generation of a nonsensical triple
>> by today's rules? It is of course directly related to the issue of how
>> to handle non-prefixed names. I have silently discarded it with a
>> thought like "nah, non-prefixed names will be ignored", but that
>> hasn't been resolved, has it? Nor what happens when undeclared
>> prefixes are used?
>>
>> I think of RDFa as a pristine approach. If reasonable, as mentioned
>> above, all kinds of things should peacefully coexist without any
>> meaning to RDFa (hence the exclusion of @class value parsing). But
>> @rel="dc.creator" is definitely too close to home to be left
>> unconsidered. As is:
>>
>>     <link rel="schema.dc" href="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" />
>>
>> ; a mechanism which looks very odd to me in an RDFa context (too
>> ad-hoc, for one; raising nesting/scope issues as well).
>>
>> I think I'd prefer if these constructs just aren't meaningful in the
>> RDFa sense. eRDF is for GRDDL, as I see it.
>>
>> I am very open to more debate though (and this is a real issue). The
>> thing to really consider is that if "dot-notation" is interpreted but
>> the "schema-dot" namespace declaration is *not*, the handling of
>> undeclared prefix usage is of utmost importance ('schema'..). And if
>> none is of meaning, how shall non-prefixed values in @rel/@rev work?
>>
>> (I might actually end up *supporting* this for pragmatic reasons. But
>> only with a desire to explicitly state that it would be for legacy
>> reasons and discouraged when authoring new XHTML+RDFa. I'm in need of
>> more convincing though.)
>>
>>
>> [Side-note: If non-prefixed names in @rel/@rev *do* mean "default
>> namespace + name", wouldn't that -- since that namespace is almost
>> invariably <http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml> -- lead to inadvertent
>> references to an unmanaged set of URIs all beginning with
>> "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"? For this alone, I vote for ignoring
>> them. Allowing ":somename" - perhaps. At least it would be (more)
>> intentional. My guess is that many host language namespaces for RDFa
>> will not also be RDF vocabularies. Predefineds like @rel="alternate"
>> in (x)html is another thing I think. Are they even concepts prefixed
>> by the xhtml syntax namespace? That's reasonably another debate
>> though.]
>>
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Niklas
>>
>>
>>
>> On 8/9/07, Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org> wrote:
>>> O.k. That is actually in line with what I said and done. I always
>>> referred to the value of @rev, @rel, @property, @instanceof as 'sort of'
>>> qnames, and I think what I meant is (and the way I implemented it) is
>>> exactly what you say: I split the string at the ':' point, take the left
>>> part as an index into an associative array ('dictionary' in Python
>>> speak) and simply concatenate the value with what is on the right hand
>>> side of ':'. Adding an alternative branch which does that for '.'
>>> instead of ':' is a piece of cake (and I have already added it to the
>>> code locally...:-)
>>>
>>> However. We clearly would need proper TF resolution on these issues.
>>>
>>> Thanks Mark
>>>
>>> I.
>>>
>>> Mark Birbeck wrote:
>>>> Hi Ivan,
>>>>
>>>> We might as well start another thread. :)
>>>>
>>>> The CURIEs spec is not actually about the square bracket stuff--that's
>>>> just a way to disambiguate between a CURIE (compact URI) and a URI.
>>>>
>>>> The idea of CURIEs is that instead of using QNames as a URI
>>>> abbreviation syntax, we use something that is specifically designed
>>>> for the job. The problem with the definition of 'QName' is that it is
>>>> essentially about defining element and attribute names in XML:
>>>>
>>>>   <a:b c:d=:x" />
>>>>
>>>> However, over the years QNames have been used to abbreviate URIs
>>>> (RDF/XML) and to namespace various features like functions (XPath) and
>>>> data types (XML Schema). At least those uses are inside XML documents,
>>>> but the use of QNames in SPARQL is genuinely odd, since it has nothing
>>>> to do with XML.

Received on Friday, 10 August 2007 07:40:43 UTC