Format of @profile files (summarizing ISSUE-39, maybe moving forward...)

Hi guys,

there has been quite some mails on the format of @profile files in the past few weeks, triggered by Richard's comment[1]. I try to give a summary on where we are, maybe trying to close the issue. References to most of the mails are available via tracker[2]. 

Reminder of the issue: Richard proposed that instead of the current

?x rdfa:term "name" .
?x rdfa:uri "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name" .

we would use

<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name> rdfa:term "name" .

There has been some pro and con arguments:

Con:
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1. it is not a correct way of modeling things because we are not making statement on a resource but on a string (Ivan, Mark; actually, Richard also acknowledged that, from a 'spec writer point of view' the current approach is the kosher one)
2. there might be some strange artifacts, primarily with prefix definitions, if we let, eg, owl:sameAs processing come into play (Toby)

Pro:
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It is certainly easier to grasp for HTML authors, ie, for the main constituency of our spec (I heard backing of this argument from Shane and Manu and I also agree with that part of the argument)

In the last few emails ([3] and consequent mails) we seemed to converge to a solution whereby we could go with the approach of Richard, but by reinforcing in the text the fact that only triples in that particular graph (ie, the graph in the @profile file) should be considered. This might take away the issue raised by Toby; if so, then the argument of simplicity for our users might have to prevail over the modeling preciseness. 

I have tried to come up, therefore, with an alternative text to the current description of profile files in the document, ie, section 9[4]. I have put an alternative text to the Wiki[5]; it would be nice if you guys could look at the text to see if it is all right as an alternative or not. We could then try to close this issue on one of our forthcoming telcos. (Note that the examples and the official XHTML profile file would have to be rewritten, too, but that becomes easy.)

Thoughts?

Ivan

P.S. Note that, while rewriting the section, but also during the discussions, some issues came up with the old text, too. Ie, if we decide _not_ to change, the spec text should be made better nevertheless:

- although the first paragraph of the current section refers to alternative serializations as possible sources for profile triples, the second bulleted item referred to RDFa only. (The new text makes it clearer.)
- as Richard noted, the current text isn't really clear about how to handle the case of mapping one term to two different URIs[6]. The new text makes this issue, actually, moot.
- the text did not reflect the fact that @profile documents can also be used to define default vocabularies. The new text does.


[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdfa-wg/2010Aug/0034.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/track/issues/39
[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdfa-wg/2010Aug/0079.html
[4] http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-rdfa-core-20100803/#s_profiles
[5] http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/wiki/ProfileSpec
[6] http://www.w3.org/mid/CB7FCC33-2BD0-4CBA-BCB5-7442CC07D185@deri.org

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Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
mobile: +31-641044153
PGP Key: http://www.ivan-herman.net/pgpkey.html
FOAF: http://www.ivan-herman.net/foaf.rdf