Re: ISSUE-147 (preserve markup by default): RDFa Processors should preserve markup by default [RDFa 1.1 in HTML5]

On Dec 28, 2012, at 11:03 AM, RDFa Working Group Issue Tracker <sysbot+tracker@w3.org> wrote:

> ISSUE-147 (preserve markup by default): RDFa Processors should preserve markup by default [RDFa 1.1 in HTML5]
> 
> http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/track/issues/147
> 
> Raised by: Manu Sporny
> On product: RDFa 1.1 in HTML5
> 
> This issue was raised by Sebastian Heath:
> 
> HTML5 and its variants such as XHTML5 provide a rich set of elements that content creators use to indicate many aspects of the texts they are representing. When processing RDF in attributes, the "RDFa 1.1 in HTML5" specification [1] should by default require preservation of all intentional markup. This is good practice. In particular, the working group should not assume that elements in content marked with the @property attribute are there by mistake. Nor should the replication of namespaces in the output be considered garbage.
> 
> Full reasoning is here: 
> 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdfa-wg/2012Dec/0074.html
> 
> This issue is being re-opened because of the following statements:
> 
> "This is good practice. In particular, the working group should not assume that elements in content marked with the @property attribute are there by mistake. Nor should the replication of namespaces in the output be considered garbage."
> 
> The working group should re-examine if:
> 
> 1) Preservation of markup is good practice for RDFa Processors.
> 2) The inclusion of HTML markup by authors was not a mistake and the feature is causing problems in RDFa 1.1 based on 6+ months of deployment experience.
> 3) The replication of namespaces should be considered garbage (I don't think the WG ever said this, and the assertion is most likely due to a mis-communication at some point).
> 4) Changing the rules at this point would cause an undue burden on authors and implementers due to conflicting rules between RDFa Core and HTML+RDFa.

If we were to do anything, it would only be for HTML5+RDFa, not XHTML1+RDFa or RDFa 1.1, as that ship has sailed. Furthermore, if this were to change for HTML5+RDFa, rdf:HTML would be a more appropriate datatype then rdf:XMLLiteral IMO.

Relating to 4), changing the rules now would be a major incompatibility with RDFa 1.1, which is explicit for this across all host language, so I think it's probably too late. The rules were changed when RDFa Core 1.1 became a REC, changing them back for HTML+RDFa would make it even more confusing.

This was resolved in May of 2010 [1]; it was also specifically called out in the charter for the RDF Web Applications Working Group [2].

Gregg

[1] http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/meetings/2010-05-13#resolution_2
[2] http://www.w3.org/2011/03/rdfwa-wg-charter

Received on Friday, 28 December 2012 20:40:47 UTC