Re: PROPOSAL to close ISSUE-40: no triples for empty elements

I don't think we should presume that:

 <> foo:bar ""

is at all useless. Somebody may well want to represent that the value
of data as it came to them was "". As opposed to not present or some
other variation.

 As you say, the question then becomes what to do with @property but
no @content or text content. I think we should not cut off the use
case whereby somebody is representing an empty string by <span
property="foo:bar"></span>.

 It requires no special case within the spec and is the simplest
solution. If there's an @property, then it's probably RDFa and should
be parsed. Simpler for authors, simpler for parser writers.

 -Sebastian

On Sun, Sep 5, 2010 at 10:55 AM, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com> wrote:
> If there are no objections to this proposal in 14 days, we will close
> ISSUE-40: no triples for empty elements.
>
> http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/track/issues/40
>
> We have traditionally gone to great lengths to not generate useless
> triples. This is in that same vein - an attempt to not generate useless
> triples. Having a triple like the following is mostly useless:
>
> <> foo:bar "".
>
> While one could make the argument that the existence of the triple could
> trigger some sort of behavior, the much stronger counter-argument is
> that, due to templating engines and lazy programming, there will be far
> more useless triples generated than useful triples.
>
> I propose that we change the RDFa Core processing rules such that an
> element that contains a @property attribute, no @content attribute, and
> no text content will not generate a triple.
>
> Please comment in 14 days from this post if you object to this proposal.
> If there are no objections within 14 days, the specification text will
> be added and ISSUE-40 will be closed.
>
> -- manu
>
> --
> Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny)
> President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> blog: WebID - Universal Login for the Web
> http://blog.digitalbazaar.com/2010/08/07/webid/2/
>
>

Received on Sunday, 5 September 2010 17:08:18 UTC