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

I agree with Gregg - this issue was debated ad nauseam two years ago.  At
that time we made what we thought was a reasonable decision based upon how
semantic data is consumed in the marketplace.  At that same time we said
that there should be an HTMLLiteral datatype that could be emitted, but
that we didn't know if there would be one.  If there were, it could be used
in HTML5+RDFa.  Has such a type emerged?

On Fri, Dec 28, 2012 at 2:40 PM, Gregg Kellogg <gregg@greggkellogg.net>wrote:

> 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
>



-- 
Shane P. McCarron
Managing Director, Applied Testing and Technology, Inc.