Re: rdfa-syntax First Public Working Draft is up!

Hi Ivan,

I think your list is fine, but just in case you weren't aware, we did
agree that some things were more important than others to get into the
first draft, so some things were consciously left out for now.


> - get the @instanceof situation to an equilibrium point and, possibly,
> adapt the wording of the processing model

There will need to be minor changes to the processing model, and there
will need to also be changes to section 6.2.2.


> - the RDFa profile is not mentioned in the document; it should be part
> of the conformance clause. We should decide whether the presence of the
> profile should be mandatory or just optional (but advised).

As we said in another thread, we have agreed that an RDFa value in
@profile. I guess we could 'advise' its use in certain use-cases, but
the problem with that is nailing down just what conditions that should
be. The reason the value is optional is that there are plenty of
use-cases where it will either not be provided, or it *cannot* be
provided. In the latter situation I don't think it makes sense to
'advise' using a @profile value if it's simply not possible to provide
one.


> The profile
> document itself should also be done, probably by referring to Fabien's
> XSLT script so that GRDDL processors could automatically handle RDFa
> files, too.

I'm not that up to speed on GRDDL. Do you know how to do all of this,
and define it? (I don't mind working it out, but if you already know
it would obviously be quicker.)


> - whether the literal canonicalization also applies to XML Literals, or
> whether those should be copied to the output verbatim

Yes...tricky. That is one issue that I don't recall us _ever_ having a
discussion about, so if anyone has strong views on either approach it
would be good to make them known now.


> - the current document still lists a set of predefined values for
> @property; if I am not mistaken the group has decided that we would not
> have those. This is important because it affects the @rel/@property
> values without qualified names. Are there still open issues with those?

You are right that we have agreed to move the @property values to a
common list, so there is no longer a distinction between @rel, @rev,
@property, etc. However, the actual approach to @rel and @rev hasn't
yet been finalised. The last 'proposal' is, I believe, my suggestion
that we should encourage authors of 'new' mark-up to use this syntax:

  <link rel=":next" href="..." />

This would make use of the default prefix, which we can easily
hard-wire to "http://www.w3.org...vocab#", by changing this section:

  <http://www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-syntax/#s_curies>

This would have the effect of saving authors from needing to declare
the XHTML namespace, i.e., from having to do long-winded mark-up like
the following:

  <html
   xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
   xmlns:xh="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab#"
  >
    <head>
      <link rel="xh:next" href="..." />
      .
      .
      .

Since this then gives us a way to use the XHTML vocab values, we can
simply say that CURIEs that have no prefix, or don't use the 'default
prefix', are simply ignored in this version of RDFa in XHTML. That
gives us time to think about how we might deal with both the XHTML
values, and other values such as Dublin Core.

Note that Ben has indicated he is happy with this suggestion--perhaps
others could also chime in on whether they think it is acceptable or
not.


> I have the impression that the only thorny issue is the @instanceof.

And the @rel one just mentioned. :)

On @instanceof, I think it is mainly myself and Ben who are still
fine-tuning our views on this. :) We have set a target of trying to
thrash this out next week, when he returns from holiday.


> A different issue is whether we want to give some more formal status to
> the hGRDDL line of thought (I have some major issues with that one, I
> must admit...). We may decide not to add this to the current round of
> RDFa, though.

Right...although I think the way out of this is to use the ":next"
syntax, and then punt the _entire_ question of legacy values to a
future version, or to hGRDDL, or whatever. But provided we give
authors a way to use things like
"http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab#license" then we don't need to say
_anything_ about hGRDDL or pre-processing or anything else, at this
point. To be clear, the way that authors would get access to
xh:license, and friends, would be like this:

  <a rel=":license" href="http://creativecommons.org...">license</a>


> Anything I forgot from my list?

I think it's good. :)

Regards,

Mark

-- 
  Mark Birbeck, formsPlayer

  mark.birbeck@formsPlayer.com | +44 (0) 20 7689 9232
  http://www.formsPlayer.com | http://internet-apps.blogspot.com

  standards. innovation.

Received on Sunday, 21 October 2007 20:32:04 UTC