Comments on the latest version of the syntax document

Mark, Shane, Ben

here are my comments on the latest version[1].

- Section 2 lists the namespace prefixes for 'svg' and 'xh11'. But these 
are not used in any of the examples, as I could see.

This might look like 'discussing how many angels can fit on the head of 
a pin', as Mark put it in another mail:-), but the reason they caught my 
eyes is that _if_ these are used as CURIE prefixes then, I guess, they 
should end with an '#' or a '/', and they don't. As they are not used, 
the safe bet is simply to remove them:-)

- Section 3.6.: The text says "There is one small change that we make to 
N-Triples, which is to allow long URIs to be abbreviated by using a URI 
mapping. This is indicated by expressing a compact URI as follows:"

We may think of making use of the fact that Turtle has now (since about 
10 days:-) a stable, W3C URI:

http://www.w3.org/TeamSubmission/turtle/

and the document is now under W3C copyright. We could, therefore, refer 
to Turtle in the list of possible serialization at the beginning of the 
section, get rid of this 'small change that we make...' text, and simply 
say that we use Turtle syntax in our examples.

B.t.w., the reference list [N3-PRIMER], too, but it is not used in the 
text. It is probably better to remove it (and add a Turtle reference...)

- Section 3.8: I would not refer to QNAMES at all. We use CURIES, that 
is what they are, and that is it. Don't open the door for discussions:-)

- Section 4.1: I am not sure I understand the 'Merge namespaces' issue 
listed there, mainly in line with the latest description of the 
@rel="next" value. Isn't that issue (if there was ever any) moot?

- This is just a small remark, not really on the document but on one of 
the semi-pending issue. The current text says:

[[[
The [current subject]. The initial value will be the same as the initial 
value of base, but it will usually change during the course of processing.
]]]

This, in fact, is indeed equivalent to the fact that the <html> element 
has an implicit @about="" attribute set. (I note that because there was 
a slight uncertainty about that in some of the discussion mails...)

- Again a comment on the angels and the pin in 5.4. The text says (after 
the fist example): "In RDFa these mappings are expressed using XML 
namespaces". The issue is that we do _not_ use XML namespaces, but just 
the XML namespace _syntax_. May be better to state that correctly...:-). 
Same remark in 5.4.1. referring to "XML namespace mechanism".

- In 5.4.3 the references to the CURIE Syntax Definition are all 
referring to the document itself, instead of the relevant chapter.

- It is very good to have Section 6. However: is it o.k. to mark that as 
'normative'? My feeling is that the 'normative' part is the processing 
step description and Section 6 is a (necessary!) informative section.

- Section 7, commenting on the angels again:-). I think the case of "_:" 
should be explicitly defined, it is a little bit open to interpretation. 
With the current text I might agree after all that all of them refer to 
the same BNode (sigh...), but making it explicit would help.

- The text in 9.2.6 says:

[[[
This attribute describes the relationship between the resource specified 
by @about (or its default value) and the resource referred to by @href 
as defined in XHTML.
]]]

As we all know, in the case of RDFa, this is a bit more complex than 
that...:-) I think no text should appear here, and it should refer back 
to the relevant section.

Actually: I wonder whether section 9 should be part of the document _at 
all_. It does not add _any_ new information for @about and the others, 
apart from our issue on the predefined list of @rel/@rev. In my view, 
the whole section could be collapsed to the list of reserved words only 
(if, after all, the group decides to keep the list as part of the RDFa 
document, instead of having it separated in a namespace document).

Cheers

Ivan


[1] http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2008/ED-rdfa-syntax-20080123/
[2] http://www.w3.org/mid/47986F45.2080603@w3.org
-- 

Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
PGP Key: http://www.ivan-herman.net/pgpkey.html
FOAF: http://www.ivan-herman.net/foaf.rdf

Received on Thursday, 24 January 2008 11:07:59 UTC