Re: Official Response to ISSUE-121 from RDF Web Apps WG

Hi Manu,

  The discussion in the teleconference[1] isn't very complete but
suggests there is reason to keep this issue alive.

 GK wrote "it's always been something I would've liked, my primary use
case for RDFa is for legal information, where we refer to document
fragments more often than not."

 NL wrote " (.. the 0.05 is for my dream of a good working solution ;)".

 The above suggests the idea is worth pursuing.

And there isn't much for me to respond to in the official reply as
it's somewhat vague.


 > 1. There are a slew of non-trivial HTTP-Range-14 issues about which
>   namespace @id refers to and which namespace @about refers to that
>   would be raised. Document identifiers mixing with semantic item
>   identifiers would be problematic at best.

"slew" is not very specific and so hard for me to respond to. I would
welcome more detail. In general, I believe the tenor of my response is
that a very flexible definition of "resource" lies at the core of RDF
(see for example the range of rdfs:isDefinedBy) but I hesitate to
write more in this direction without more specificity from the WG.
HTTP-Range-14 issues come up in some contexts, but by no means all and
so their simple invocation is inconclusive.

> 2. It would break existing documents that use @typeof and @id on the
>   same document.

A simple versioning mechanism for RDFa in XHTML would solve this.

> 3. It would make RDFa more complicated than it already is.

How? For the use cases I suggest[2], it would make things simpler.

> 4. There are no compelling use cases - that is, most use cases can
>   already be addressed using the attributes that exist right now.
>

I offered 2 in a further comment [2] but it seems they weren't
addressed. Or I should say I offered two cases that were compelling to
me. GK added what might be considered another.

So to be clear, I consider the issue still open and not fully
discussed. Many changes have been made to RDFa in the last few months
to ease its adoption and I think ISSUE 121 warrants further
discussion.

 Thank you,

 Sebastian.


[1] http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/meetings/2011-12-08#ISSUE__2d_121__3a__Use___40_id_to_set_the_subject_in_RDFa
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdfa-wg/2011Nov/0149.html
(the formatting of this seems to have gone wrong so I can resend.)

On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 1:47 PM, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com> wrote:
> Hi Sebastian,
>
> 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 issue before we enter
> the 3rd Last Call for the RDFa 1.1 work this coming Tuesday. The Last
> Call will last for 3 weeks, so there is still time for you to discuss
> your concerns if we have not fully addressed them.
>
> Your issue was tracked here:
>
> ISSUE-121: Using @id to set subject in RDFa
> https://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/track/issues/121
>
> Explanation of Issue
> --------------------
>
> You had wanted us to consider allowing @id attribute to set the subject
> when @typeof existed on the same element:
>
> """
> Currently, RDFa processors do not take account of @id attributes in
> host-languages. In particular, in (x)html the @id attribute is
> ignored. In (x)html, this creates unnecessary complication in which
> the value in @id needs to be prefixed by '#' and put in an @about
> attribute in order to make semantic markup visible to both html agents
> and rdfa processors.
>
> Example:
>
>  <p id="item1" typeof="ex:item" about="#item1">
>   <span property="item_name">An interesting item (1)</span>
>  </p>
>
> I suggest that a combination of @typeof and @id cause the subject to
> be set to the fully qualified URL implied by the value @id, according
> to normal URL processing rules defined for HTML and related languages.
> """
>
> Working Group Decision
> ----------------------
>
> The Working Group had considered allowing this very early in the RDFa
> 1.0 days and decided that @id by itself would generate far too many junk
> triples in the output. We re-opened the issue because we did not believe
> that we had discussed @typeof and @id being used in concert to create a
> triple. The full discussion can be found here:
>
> http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/meetings/2011-12-08#ISSUE__2d_121__3a__Use___40_id_to_set_the_subject_in_RDFa
>
> The WG felt that the following issues prevent us from adopting what you
> propose:
>
> 1. There are a slew of non-trivial HTTP-Range-14 issues about which
>   namespace @id refers to and which namespace @about refers to that
>   would be raised. Document identifiers mixing with semantic item
>   identifiers would be problematic at best.
> 2. It would break existing documents that use @typeof and @id on the
>   same document.
> 3. It would make RDFa more complicated than it already is.
> 4. There are no compelling use cases - that is, most use cases can
>   already be addressed using the attributes that exist right now.
>
> So, in the end, the WG did the following:
>
> RESOLVED: The @id attribute MUST NOT be used to identify a subject in RDFa.
>
> http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/meetings/2011-12-08#resolution_4
>
> 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)
> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> blog: PaySwarm vs. OpenTransact Shootout
> http://manu.sporny.org/2011/web-payments-comparison/

Received on Monday, 30 January 2012 02:50:08 UTC