Re: [RDFa] ISSUE-3 @class and @role for rdf:type

On Thu, 05 Jul 2007 12:42:41 +0200, Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org> wrote:

>
>
> Steven Pemberton wrote:
>> On Thu, 05 Jul 2007 09:37:13 +0200, Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org> wrote:
>>
>>> I agree with the general direction of your thoughts. @role is being
>>> discussed by the XHTML group to be included into some future releases  
>>> of
>>> XHTML (I do not want to go into the debate of which version number this
>>> will have:-). We should _not_ use that attribute and bring it forward,
>>> so to say, to XHML1.1. I is not our role (sic!).
>>>
>>> Formally, and to close the issue: I vote for @class as described.
>>
>> I think that your argumentation doesn't count here Ivan.
>>
>> We are 'bringing forward' several things, by creating an XHTML 1.1+RDFa.
>> What attributes we use are independent. @about is new too, but
>> essential, @role is already implemented in Firefox, and we can add it to
>> the mix if we want.
>>
>> Don't muddy the waters please :-)
>
> :-)
>
> There is a difference, though. @about has been introduced for RDFa.
> However, (and I may be wrong with that!) @role was introduced with some
> general, not-necessarily-RDF usage in XHTML2 that RDFa _may_ reuse.
> And, from the RDFa side, there is no way to predict what the evolution
> of @role will be in future versions of XHTML2...

Well, all these attributes were being bandied around originally at the  
same time, they were used to represent RDF properties, but there was at  
that time no concept of 'RDFa'. Several early examples of proposed uses  
used @role to represent what we now recognise as rdf:type. For a long time  
@role *was* the way to do it, until @class was proposed because  
microformats sort-of use it in a similarish sort of way sometimes. So  
really @class is the newcomer, not @role.

Steven

Received on Thursday, 5 July 2007 11:11:07 UTC