PROPOSAL to address RDFa Profiles - ISSUE-73 and ISSUE-78

This is a proposal to address the RDFa Profiles issues that we currently
have open - ISSUE-73 and ISSUE-78. There are three parts to this discussion:

1. What is an RDFa Profile and what is it used for?
2. How are RDFa Profiles managed now and into the future?
3. What is the correct message to authors using RDFa Profiles?

This is partly a re-formulation of Ivan's proposal with a number of
items added in that have been discussed since then. I try to list
assertions rather than the reasoning behind those assertions (which are
captured in a number of e-mails and telecon discussions).

This proposal is meant to capture a consistent proposal based on the
current simultaneous discussions that are going on around the RDFa
Profiles issues. While I'm trying to make sure this captures the current
state of the discussion, there are probably bits missing, and not
everyone agrees with these assertions:

RDF/RDFa Profiles
-----------------

1. There will be one dated RDF profile, which XML+RDFa will use:
   http://w3.org/2011/profiles/rdf
2. There will be one dated (X)HTML+RDFa profile:
   http://w3.org/2011/profiles/rdfa
3. The XML+RDF profile will be a sub-set of the (X)HTML+RDFa profile.
4. The XML+RDFa part of the RDFa Core 1.1 specification will
   reference http://w3.org/2011/profiles/rdf as the default profile.
5. The XHTML+RDFa 1.1 and HTML+RDFa 1.1 specifications will reference
   http://w3.org/2011/profiles/rdfa as the default profile.
6. Default profiles are allowed to be cached and hard-coded in
   implementations.

RDF/RDFa Profile Management
---------------------------

1. The profiles are modified on a consistent basis and do not
   change very often (perhaps once every 1-2 years).
2. Prefixes and terms are managed by the Semantic Web Activity Lead,
   who announces changes on some well-known mailing list prior to
   each re-publication.
3. Prefixes and terms MUST NOT be /removed/ from dated profiles.
4. Prefixes and terms MAY be /updated/ if the new meaning of the
   term or prefix is semantically backwards compatible with the
   previous term or prefix.
5. Vocabulary maintainers are strongly discouraged from re-using
   the same prefix for a new vocabulary performing the same purpose.
   For example, if a new non-semantically-backwards-compatible version
   of 'geo' is released, it SHOULD be named 'geo2' or 'geonext' (in
   other words, the prefix for the new vocabulary SHOULD NOT be 'geo').

Authoring using RDF/RDFa Profiles
---------------------------------
1. Authors are strongly encouraged to use @prefix to ensure that
   prefixes that they believe to be in the default RDFa Profile
   continue to mean what they want them to mean.
2. If authors do not want to use @prefix, they MAY use @profile to
   specify a default RDFa profile.
3. Authors MUST NOT assume the prefixes/terms in the default profile
   will remain the same over multiple years. If they want to utilize
   the default RDFa profile, they MUST specify the profile to use via
   the @profile attribute in their documents.
4. If authors do not use @prefix and do not use @profile to point to
   the default profile, their content MAY change semantic meaning in
   the future (such as when RDFa 2.0 is released).

What did I miss?

-- 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 Wednesday, 9 February 2011 17:52:02 UTC