Some comments on the RDFa 1.1 Core and Primer

Hi all!

I have some comments on the Core and Primer documents. There are some
questions here which we should discuss (and which are possibly
issues).


## Comments on RDFa 1.1 Core ##

1. The link "A sample test harness" points to
<http://rdfa.digitalbazaar.com/test-suite/>. Should this be located at
the W3C?

2. In section "3.4 Plain literals", the sentence:

  "Einstein's name is represented by a plain literal, which means that
it is a basic string with no type or language information"

isn't correct. In RDF 1.0, the "Concepts and Abstract Syntax" section
"3.4 Literals" says: "A plain literal is a string combined with an
optional language tag. This may be used for plain text in a natural
language." [1].

We should change the wording to reflect this.

3. As we've discussed, in RDF 1.1 there will be no "plain" literals at
all; they will all have a datatype. The current plain literals without
language will all be of type xsd:string, and plain literals with a
language will become rdf:langString(!). I recently discovered that
when looking at the latest SPARQL 1.1 WD (now in Last Call) [2]. (See
also the discussion [3] about how the SPARQL-WG handled that.)

I still think our decision (and the advice from Richard Cyganiak)
holds about how we needn't worry to much about that though. In fact,
rdf:langString actually makes things more uniform. But it may be
prudent to think again if we should stick a note to the end of section
"3.4 Plain literals" mentioning exactly this. I can volunteer to write
that note.

4. Just as David Wood mentions, there are some remnants of "URI" in
the document. The most glaring one is probably in CURIE itself. While
I understand that this is a legacy name which we have to keep, we
should probably explain this where CURIEs are introduced.

5. I also find these occurrences of URI:

- In "5. Attributes and Syntax", the definitions of href, src and
vocab (perhaps these are ok though?)
- In "6. CURIE Syntax Definition", first item in first bullet list:
"the set of mappings from prefixes to URIs"
- In "7.5 Sequence", step 6, two times in the sentence: "otherwise, by
using the URI from @href, if present, obtained according to the
section on CURIE and URI Processing."
- In "8.4 List generation": The sentence "Lists may also include URIs
and not only literals."
- In "9. RDFa Contexts": The property rdfa:uri.

6. "B. The RDFa Vocabulary": I believe we should look this over to
make sure everyone is satisfied with the terms and definitions of this
vocabulary. Here are some concerns:

- There is rdfa:uri, as just mentioned, which should reasonably be
named rdfa:iri.
- There is rdfa:usesVocabulary which at least Toby Inkster and I think
should be named rdfa:vocab. I think that is important since *every*
document containing @vocab will produce a triple with that as a
predicate, so we should make sure the name of it sits well with
people.
- That might also call for renaming rdfa:vocabulary to e.g.
rdfa:defaultVocabulary (or merge these, albeit I'm unsure of the
semantic validity of that). Also its description confuses me a bit,
ending with "the value is can be any string; for documentation
purposes it is advised to use the string ‘true’ or ‘True’".


## Comments on RDFa 1.1 Primer ##

1. In Section "5.2 Automatic Summaries":

The example starts with a <div> containing:

    about="#me" typeof="foaf:Person"

Currently, the subsequent <ol>, where interests are linked with a
hanging rel, is:

    <ol about="#me" typeof="foaf:Person" rel="foaf:interest">

This doesn't need the repeated @about and @typeof. It should only be:

    <ol rel="foaf:interest">


2. In "7. Acknowledgments", change "Niklas Linström" to "Niklas Lindström". :)

3. I think we came to the conclusion that we should add text (or a
note) in the Primer about how @resource can be used to provide a new
subject? We said so at the end of the last telecon [4]. (This was
regardless of changing Lite to include it -- that is we considered it
to be wise since not a lot of people have noticed this potentially
useful usage pattern.) Is this desirable? If so I can volunteer to
draft such a note.


Best regards,
Niklas Lindström
--
<http://neverspace.net/>

[1]: http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-concepts-20040210/#section-Literals
[2]: http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/WD-sparql11-query-20120105/#func-datatype
[3]: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-dawg/2011OctDec/0153.html
[4]: http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/meetings/2011-12-15

Received on Thursday, 12 January 2012 02:52:57 UTC