Official Response to ISSUE-128 from RDF Web Apps WG

Hi Mike,

Thank you for your public feedback on the RDFa 1.1 documents. This is an
official response from the RDF Web Apps WG to your Last Call issue
before we enter the Candidate Recommendation phase for the RDFa 1.1
specifications.

Your issue was tracked here:

https://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/track/issues/128

Explanation of Issue
--------------------

While working on the new validator for W3C, you noticed that the RDFa
Core specification did not explicitly mention that the empty string is
allowed as a value for all RDFa attributes. Specifically, you said:

"""
[The] spec says that the value of the property attribute is:

"a white space separated list of TERMorCURIEorAbsIRIs"
http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/sources/rdfa-core/Overview-src.html#s_syntax

The empty string is not a valid term or CURIE or absolute IRI.

If the intention is that the empty string should be allowed as the value
of the property attribute, then the RDFa Core 1.1 spec needs to instead
be updated to say that the allowed value for the property attribute is,
"a white space separated list of *zero or more* TERMorCURIEorAbsIRIs".

Incidentally, that's true for the values of other attributes as well;
the spec needs to explicitly say either "zero or more" or "one or more"
for them. Lack of that language makes it ambiguous.
"""

Working Group Decision
----------------------

The Working Group had always intended that the empty string was valid
for all RDFa attribute values and agreed to update the specification
text to make this more explicit.

RESOLVED: For the purposes of conformance, an empty string for the value
of any RDFa attribute MUST be allowed as conforming. (non-substantive)

http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/meetings/2012-02-23#resolution_6

Since the Working Group had always intended this to be the case, it is
noted as a non-substantive change for the purposes of the W3C Process.

The group would also like to thank you for your fine work on the new
HTML validator suite for W3C, which includes both RDFa 1.1 and RDFa Lite
1.1.

Feedback
--------

Since this is an official Working Group response to your issue, we would
appreciate it if you responded to this e-mail and let us know if the
decision made by the group is acceptable to you as soon as possible.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny)
President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: PaySwarm Website for Developers Launched
http://digitalbazaar.com/2012/02/22/new-payswarm-alpha/

Received on Sunday, 26 February 2012 20:25:46 UTC