Re: Summary of @href/@resource completing triples issue (v2.0)

Hi Ivan,

You wrote:
> No big deal, but nevertheless... I guess the issue here is that the
> usage of @href is overloaded in RDFa for clickable and RDF reasons and
> that may lead to problems. And that is why my initial instinct was to
> say that @href "does" something in RDFa-land only when it appears with
> some other RDFa attribute (ie, the user knows what he/she is doing...)
>
> I am not saying it is a big issue, and we may live with that. I just
> wanted to air my discomfort, and thereby adding to the overall confusion
> before we get too tired:-)
>
> Of course, the argument above does not apply if I use @resource. Ben was
> asking somewhere whether we should consider the symmetry of @href and
> @resource as immutable, and that is a valid question of course...
> Although I believe we should try to keep these two together...

But this is the key question that is under discussion, so I think you
do need to say whether you can live with it or not...and whether it is
a "big issue" or not.

As I said in another post, if this _is_ a "big issue" for you, then
the only truly consistent way out of this is to remove @href from the
RDFa attribute list altogether.

I know that you are saying that we _could_ just limit @href's
operation to only apply when another RDFa attribute is present, but I
assume you are including @rel and @rev in that list? And as I
explained yesterday, since they are HTML attributes independent of
RDFa, it just leaves exactly the same issue that you are uncomfortable
with; you still can't mark things up in a 'standard' HTML way, in a
way that will not generate a triple.

But as I also said, that approach takes us back 4 years! The
incorporation of @href into RDFa is what led to Ben's 'bridging the
clickable and semantic webs' formulation that we all love to quote.

So either we're going to bridge the two webs, or we're not.

These are hard decisions, I know, but we need to have some balls here
(if you'll excuse the expression) and make the leap. The whole reason
that RDF and HTML were never integrated prior to the RDFa proposals
was that everyone was always avoiding the bold step of actually
changing HTML. But someone has to take that bold step at some point,
and I thought it was going to be us. It is simply not possible to
fulfil a requirement that @href generates triples, at the same time
that it does not generate triples...we're bounded by logic here. :)

You need to say how big an issue this is for you, and if it's not that
big a deal we should get on and bridge those webs.

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 Thursday, 10 January 2008 11:04:10 UTC