Re: HTML WG: ISSUE-120 Use of prefixes is too complicated for a Web technology

Simon,

On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 11:04 AM, Simon Grant <asimong@gmail.com> wrote:

> What a riveting issue!
>
> If I may throw in a view from the sidelines...
>
> Hixie has a point, I think, and the part of the point that makes sense to
> me is that the prefix mechanism is more complex than necessary, and
> therefore more error-prone than necessary. However, I have a spec with
> CURIEs included, and I would want to be able to use them for RDFa as well.
> To be fairer, I think Hixie should propose something that avoids his worry,
> but still delivers what we need. Since he hasn't done it, it would be nice
> if someone else did.
>
> This is probably way off the mark - please treat as a "straw man"...
> (a) a registry could be set up for common namespace or prefix
> abbreviations. Needs very good governance, and to be done quickly. If it
> works for mime-types, why not for prefixes?
>

This could easily be done with RDFa profiles [1]. This "standard" profile
would list common prefixes, would be part of the spec and hosted somewhere
on w3.org?

<disclaimer>I'm a bit rusty on the latest additions of the RDFa 1.1 spec, so
there might be better ways of doing this.</disclaimer>

Steph.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-core/#s_profiles


> (b) have an easily distinguishable mechanism for defining one's own
> prefixes, which can be more complex, but naive web authors won't ever need
> to use.
> I must confess I was always uneasy about using xmlns for CURIE prefixes,
> and glad there will be a replacement anyway.
>
> Could this actually be done as part of merging Microdata with RDFa?
>
> Simon
>
>
> On 15 September 2010 13:59, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com> wrote:
>
>> Just a heads-up. The editor of the HTML5 specification has escalated an
>> issue in the HTML WG that started out as a bug against RDFa in HTML.
>> This concerns the design decision to use prefixes in RDFa as well as the
>> concept of CURIEs:
>>
>> http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/issues/120
>>
>> The entire bug history can be found here:
>>
>> http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=7670
>>
>> -- manu
>>
>> --
>> Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny)
>> President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
>> blog: Saving Journalism - The PaySwarm Developer API
>> http://digitalbazaar.com/2010/09/12/payswarm-api/
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Simon Grant
> +44 7710031657
> http://www.simongrant.org/home.html
>