Re: [Fwd: [uf-discuss] Fwd: [whatwg] Removing @rev]

Niklas Lindström wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> Well, as long as this doesn't mean @rev may be dropped from (future
> domains of) RDFa? 

I do not think so, as far as RDFa is concerned. The worst that can 
happen is that @rev joins the other, RDFa specific attributes like 
@about, @resource, etc.

>                     I mean, if HTML5 "wins", and e.g. XHTML2
> applications will be scarce to non-existant (and when XHTML 1.1(+RDFa)
> "eventually" becomes a legacy format), having no support for @rev may
> have a bad effect for lots of use cases.
> 

It is really unclear for the moment how the relationship of RDFa to 
HTML5 will evolve (or, for that matter, how HTML5 will evolve). One 
direction that the HTML5 guys are considering and may lead to a HTML5 
specific RDFa version may be that all RDFa attributes will look like 
@rdfa-about, @rdfa-resource and, well, maybe, @rdfa-rev. Future only can 
tell...

> It depends on other things, but since AFAIK @rev reduces the need for
> repetition in a lot of cases, such as describing
> memberships/composition (e.g. as I describe in
> <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-in-xhtml-tf/2008Jan/0091.html>),
> it (probably) has a direct effect on the ease of building end-user
> applications that produce RDFa (since e.g. repetition of uri:s
> requires parallell maintenance to handle the indent).
> 

I fully agree. In my (limited) experience with using RDFa, @rev does not 
occur very frequently but when it does, it is extremely useful in 
expressing things concisely.

> [Digression: It's a complex issue of course, but I'm uncomfortable
> with the way HTML5 seems to drop stuff that are relevant to many good
> things, e.g. RDFa. Well, @profile and @rev to date(?), but who knows
> what else may be thrown out since "nobody uses it".. I hope for a
> future for XHTML2. (Or even something like "web document markup" and
> an extension like "web application markup", but that's another
> story.)]

Niklas, I think you are not alone with your feelings. I would advice 
that you directly take it up either with the HTML5 group or in public 
fora. You represent the Dublin Core community, eg, related to the whole 
(digital) library community, not an insignificant crowd...

Thanks

Ivan

> 
> Just my two cents.
> 
> Best regards,
> Niklas
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 4:27 AM, Ben Adida <ben@adida.net> wrote:
>> Manu Sporny wrote:
>>> This has bearing on RDFa in HTML5... I had heard that @rev was being
>>> preserved from somewhere as well... looks like it's on the way out.
>> I noticed this while building my cleanroom RDFa parser on top of the HTML5
>> parser. It actually strips @rev out. I don't understand why it goes to that
>> extent when other attributes, e.g. "foobar", make it into the parse tree
>> just fine. In any case, RDFa can function fine without @rev. I think it's
>> rather pointless to get rid of it just because it supposedly confused some
>> authors (those people can just keep on ignoring it), but if that's the
>> decision, it's no significant skin off our backs.
>>
>> (Side note: my only delay in the cleanroom implementation is that all of the
>> SPARQL engines require RDF/XML and not N3... currently passing 70-80% of the
>> test cases...)
>>
>> -Ben
>>
>>
>>
>>
> 

-- 

Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
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