Re: Dublin Core citation in RDFa 1.1 Primer - also "unconstrained" properties

On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 12:32:28PM +0200, Ivan Herman wrote:
> > The RDFa 1.1 Primer, W3C Editor's Draft 21 October 2011 [1], cites ("[DC11]"):
> > 
> >    Dublin Core metadata initiative. Dublin Core metadata element set, version
> >    1.1. July 1999. Dublin Core recommendation. URL:
> >    http://purl.oclc.org/docs/core/documents/rec-dces-19990702.htm 
> > 
> > This is a very old URL -- so old, that it no longer resolves.  The best URLs
> > to use for Dublin Core are:
> > 
> >    http://dublincore.org/documents/2010/10/11/dcmi-terms/ - or 
> >    http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/ ("latest version")
> 
> Thanks Tom. I have changed it in the source:
> 
> http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/sources/rdfa-primer/Overview-src.html
> 
> and this will automatically transfer to the final version when it will be generated for publication.

Thank you, Ivan.

> > I see this as a significant question for the Semantic Web community that
> > goes well beyond DCMI Metadata Terms.  The question is: Given our current
> > understanding of implementation of RDF vocabularies, and consumption of RDF
> > data, should we promote properties with domains and ranges, or properties
> > without?  Does the answer depend on content of use?  Previous discussions
> > on this list concluded that the RDFa documentation should consistently use
> > /terms/ properties, but is this still the opinion of this group?
> 
> Thomas, in general I would prefer to send this question to, eg, the SW
> Coordination Group or the RDF Group. Or maybe, and that might be the best
> solution, the SWIG mailing list. The RDFa work is only on syntax, which is
> oblivious to these types of questions, and I think it would be better to
> discuss that with the larger community.

Understood.

> As far as this group is concerned, there are two issues of relevance here,
> which are much more restricted to the DCMI issues:
> 
> - Which version to refer to in our examples. Beyond the issue that this
> should be consistent, we simply follow what DCMI feels more comfortable with.
> Hence our usage of /terms/ as we discussed earlier. As those examples are not
> normative, I would think that it does not make such a big difference for now
> and we can simply stay with that.

That seems reasonable.

> - (This is more important) the default context for RDFa defines a fixed and
> default prefix for DC. At present, we define the 'dc' prefix for
> http://purl.org/dc/terms/ (I think in agreement with you). 

Yes - I believe that discussion is on record in this list.

>                                                            If, at the end of
> that discussion, DCMI feels that this has to change, we are happy to do it.

Generally speaking, DCMI simply wants to "do the right thing", and our gentle
advocacy of /terms/ was motivated by our perception that the Semantic Web
community -- i.e., users of DCMI Metadata Terms as _RDF_ properties and not
just for their natural-language definitions -- strongly preferred properties
constrained with ranges ("string vs thing").

As a reality check, I'd like to ping the community again either to confirm that
this is still how the community sees it -- or to re-assess the utility of
"free-range" properties (as Corey Harper likes to call them).

I'll prepare a post for discussion on the lists.

Many thanks,
Tom

-- 
Tom Baker <tom@tombaker.org>

Received on Saturday, 29 October 2011 15:02:41 UTC