safe curies with undefined prefixes in @about/@resource

Consider:

  <div profile="http://example.com/profile"
    xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/">
    <p about="#bob">
      <span property="foaf:name">Bob</span>
      <span about="[fred:me]" property="foaf:name">Fred</span>
    </p>
  </div>

Assuming that the profile document defines the prefix "fred", then the
names "Fred" and "Bob" are taken to be different resources.

If prefix "fred" being undefined leads to the about="[fred:me]" attribute
being completely ignored, then a processor will assume that the names
"Bob" and "Fred" both apply to the same resource.

It seems to me that a more useful way of processing it would be to take
about="[fred:me]", when "fred" is undefined, to introduce a new blank
node. That way, like the correct behaviour when "fred" is defined, the
names apply to two different resources; it's just that we don't know the
URI for one of them.

-Toby

Received on Monday, 12 April 2010 07:29:52 UTC