Re: ISSUE-156: Media type parameter for turtle

* Andy Seaborne <andy@apache.org> [2013-10-09 18:10+0100]
> On 09/10/13 16:22, RDF Working Group Issue Tracker wrote:
> >ISSUE-156: Media type parameter for turtle
> >
> >http://www.w3.org/2011/rdf-wg/track/issues/156
> >
> >Raised by:
> >On product:
> 
> We should not be changing anything that alters the MIME type
> registration nor anything that means deployed code should be
> chnaged.
> 
> 1/ The registration is already done and people have been using it.
> 2/ Changing the behaviour is a new LC and we do not have the time.

My action was to verify that we'd have to re-issue a LC. This is
indeed the case, though Philippe Le Hegaret pointed out that we do
technically have time since it appears we could easily skip a second
CR.

The proposal would be to add an optional version=1.1 media type
parameter, along with the text "The 'version' parameter identifies a
version of the Turtle language. The 2013 Turtle specification (this
document) is identified as version '1.1'. Version 1.1 is
backwards-compatible with the 2011 W3C Team Submission."

That said, the rigorous case for versioning is probably not as strong
as the human-engineering case for not versioning.

prominent successes without versioning:

  SPARQL 1.1 does not have a media type to discriminate it from 1.0.

  CSS has several versions, all of which use the same media type.


less successful efforts with versioning:

  XML1.1 followed the path of rigorous versioning and got so little
  adoption that most of its grammar extensions were back-ported into
  1.0 fifth edition.

  HTML DOCTYPEs have version numbers which were never reflected in
  media types or, apparently, in different behaviors in browsers.

After all of this, I think we will get the best adoption by simply
ignoring the problem (much as that frustrates me).
-- 
-ericP

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Received on Tuesday, 15 October 2013 12:51:03 UTC