Using @resource instead of @about in RDFa Lite (ISSUE-119)

Hello,

It is my option that @resource is much easier for newbies to understand
than @about and I would like to see @resource part of RDFa Lite.

In the Callimachus Framework we use RDFa 1.0 as a templating language.
Our users manually create a sample XHTML+RDFa document that the
framework uses to produce other XHTML+RDFa documents (with different RDF
data substituted). As part of running this project we are faced with
explaining the RDFa markup to our users.

Hanging relationships of RDFa is very confusing. It is not clear to
everyone when nested markup completes the relationships. Add an href to
a seemingly unrelated element can change the data.

Although the markup below is clear.

<div rel="ex:member">
  <div about="member">
    <span property="ex:name">Member Name</span>
  </div>
</div>

Adding a new element can causes unexpected results as show below.

<div rel="ex:member">
  <div about="member">
    <span property="ex:name">Member Name</span>
  </div>
  <a href="add-new-member">Click here to add a new member</a>
</div>

We advice our users to repeat the predicate (for each object) and use
@resource to identify objects. Following this our users stay out of
trouble with hanging relationships.

<div>
  <div rel="ex:member" resource="member">
    <span property="ex:name">Member Name</span>
  </div>
  <a href="add-member">Click here to add a new member</a>
</div>

The above could be rewritten to use @property instead of @rel in RDFa
1.1, but without @resource (in RDFa Lite) one would have to use @src or
@href, which may not make sense on the element or may already be used in
the markup.

If RDFa 1.1 Lite included @resource (and not @about) many of our
templates could be written in RDFa 1.1 Lite with only trivial changes.
However, if RDFa 1.1 Lite does not included @resource most of our
templates could not be represented in RDFa Lite.

So I strongly support Niklas' suggestion of using @resource rather than
@about in RDFa 1.1 Lite.

Regards,
James

Received on Wednesday, 8 February 2012 20:36:59 UTC