Fwd: namespace bundles

Dan Brickley wrote:
> http://swig.xmlhack.com/2010/01/26/2010-01-26.html#1264519484.310614
> 
> in case you didn't see it...
> have a look at the xmpp capabilities discovery mechanism.
> they had a need to simplify a big pile of namespaces into a short
> string, ... which unambigously IDs a set of URI-named capabilities
> wondering if we can do similar with namespace declarations?
> 
> ie. sha1 of a list like: foaf:http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/ ,
> dc:http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/ etc
> 
> then use that short string, 'aa315f6b2' in markup, <p
> vocabs:aa315f6b2="http://details-elsewhere.example.com/">...
> 
> this would allow well known bundles to be recognised without going to
> the network... thinking out loud

We recently had a related discussion on the telecon about pre-defining
the top-10 vocabularies in RDFa 1.1 as displayed at prefix.cc. Parsers
could then use common prefixes without relying on xmlns: to define them.

If this sounds like a discussion we had two years ago, it is - the
reason to reconsider it is that people really seem to want this feature.
It would, in effect, be hard-coding these values into the specification.
New specs could be revised to include new prefixes, so references to
vocab="rdfa-2012" and vocab="rdfa-2014" would add new mappings, but
never override old mappings. Thus, this would always be the mapping for
foaf:

foaf -> http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/

If we're going to do something like that, we might as well do this (note
the keyword in the @vocab element):

<html vocab="rdfa-2010">
...
<body>

<div about="#me" typeof="foaf:Person">
    <span property="foaf:name">Dan Brickley</span>
</div>

The biggest drawback would be having to revise this list every couple of
years.

-- manu

--
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny)
President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Monarch - Next Generation REST Web Services
http://blog.digitalbazaar.com/2009/12/14/monarch/

Received on Tuesday, 26 January 2010 16:56:04 UTC