Last Call Response to ISSUE-63: Case-insensitive term matching

Hi Toby,

This is an official response from the RDFa Working Group concerning your
comments around ISSUE-63: Case-insensitive term matching is
non-deterministic at times.

http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/track/issues/63

This issue concerns how case-insensitive term matching is implemented in
RDFa Processors. That is, given two term mappings, "Agent" and "agent",
which one will be picked in the case of the following markup?

typeof="agENT"

The previous answer was that the behavior was non-deterministic. After
consideration by the RDFa Working Group, we decided that enforcing a
deterministic search algorithm could impact implementation performance
and create unnecessary complexity for a case where it is unknown whether
the author meant to type "Agent" or "agent". That is, even if we were to
be deterministic on what was picked, the result may still be wrong based
on the authors original intent.

You can read more about the discussion here:

http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/meetings/2011-01-20#ISSUE__2d_63__3a__Case__2d_insensitive_term_matching

and also here:

http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/meetings/2011-02-01#ISSUE__2d_63__3a__Case__2d_insensitive_term_matching_is_non__2d_deterministic_at_times

The RDFa Working Group determined that case-insensitive term matching
for two terms that only differ in case, where an exact case-sensitive
match isn't found, and where a case-insensitive search must be performed
is still non-deterministic by design.

Thank you for your participation in the Working Group, Toby, and your
continued diligence and skill in finding issues like this in the
technical implementation of these documents.

Since this is a Last Call issue, we usually ask that you please respond
to this e-mail. However, since we have you on record as agreeing to the
change during the RDFa telecon, that is not necessary. We are closing
this issue and marking it as resolved with the original submitter
agreeing to the decision made by the RDFa Working Group.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny)
President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Towards Universal Web Commerce
http://digitalbazaar.com/2011/01/31/web-commerce/

Received on Sunday, 6 February 2011 19:36:24 UTC