Re: ISSUE-117 (about-on-HTML): Consider disallowing @about on <html> [RDFa 1.1 in HTML5]

On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 1:46 PM, Toby Inkster <tai@g5n.co.uk> wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:39:24 +0100
> Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org> wrote:
>
>> What this rule says, in terms of elements, is that <html> (or any top
>> element) _has_ this magic behaviour, ie, an @about="" is introduced
>> on that level, conceptually (unless there is an explicit @about, that
>> is). So what does <head> and <body> magic brings us?
>
> As I said, I believe it is entirely so that people can do this:
>
>        <body typeof="foaf:Document">
>
> without generating a new blank node, and without having to go through
> the back-breaking effort of adding about="".

I believe so too. I think it also had to do with not being allowed to
add any one of @about, @resource or @typeof directly to <html> due to
DTD restrictions. But I'm not sure about any argument for the case of
not having to use an explicit @about (or @resource). (Perhaps it was
originally said that this magic should only work in the root <html>,
where I imagine a marginal case for it..)

> It's a fairly narrow use case.

I very much agree. I would be all for dropping this! If I want to use
@typeof in <head> or <body>, I would have to problems adding a
@resource along with it (with either the subject or empty to use the
implicit or via <base> supplied base). It makes it much clearer!

So +1 for Toby's first proposal:

    1. Ditch the magic behaviour of the <head> and <body> elements in
    HTML+RDFa. Preferably in XHTML+RDFa too.

(Although we should definitely check for any usage of @typeof alone in
head and body in the planned scraping and analysis for RDFa usage.)

Best regards,
Niklas

Received on Thursday, 17 November 2011 10:55:40 UTC