Fwd: Re: GRDDL WG: Do not deprecate the profile attribute

------- Forwarded message -------
From: "Harry Halpin" <hhalpin@ibiblio.org>
To: "Steven Pemberton" <steven.pemberton@cwi.nl>
Cc: public-xhtml2@w3.org, public-grddl-wg <public-grddl-wg@w3.org>
Subject: Re: GRDDL WG: Do not deprecate the profile attribute
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 13:55:12 +0200


Steve,

Steven Pemberton wrote:
> Hi Harry,
>
> A member of the XHTML2 WG, Masataka Yakura, replied to you in July[1]
> that XHTML2 keeps the profile functionality but expresses it with a
> link element. Instead of
>
>     <head profile="http://www.w3.org/...">
>
> you now write
>
>     <head>
>         <link rel="profile" href="http://www.w3.org/..."/>
>
> since this is more consistent with how metadata is expressed in XHTML2.
>
> Since we hadn't had a response from you yet, we thought that we would
> ask explicitely if all you need is the profile functionality, and this
> syntax solves your use case, or there is something specific about the
> profile="..." syntax that makes the link syntax unsuitable.
We discussed this response at our last GRDDL WG telecon, and we still
believe that the XHTML 1, method of expressing metadata using @profile
has no overwhelming disadvantages that merit its deprecation, and so
deprecating @profile for consistency while breaking backwards
compatibility with XHTML 1 is not a decision we support. If XHTML2
deprecates it, due to this lack of backwards compatibility XHTML2
deprecates much of GRDDL's compatibility with XHTML2.

The link syntax you suggest is of course equivalent to @profile except
in syntax, but the problem is that some software, like GRDDL, already
uses the @profile syntax. Given that XHTML 2 is not a recommendation and
GRDDL was chartered for compatibility with XHTML 1, we followed the
@profile convention in GRDDL, and we would prefer that GRDDL be
compatible with XHTML 2.  We would prefer if GRDDL and XHTML 2 not be
incompatible.

Hope this makes our reasoning clear, and best of luck. Again, we thought
your WG would at least want to know about this particular incompatibility.

        thanks,
              harry
> Thanks!
>
> Steven Pemberton
> For the XHTML2 WG
>
> [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xhtml2/2007Jul/0039
>
> On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 03:02:41 +0200, Harry Halpin <hhalpin@ibiblio.org>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> XHTML2 WG,
>>
>> I'm Harry Halpin, the Chair of the W3C GRDDL (Gleaning Resource
>> Descriptions from Dialects of Language) WG, which is producing a
>> technology that allows authors of XHTML and XML documents and
>> vocabularies to explicitly license a transform to RDF, and currently has
>> Proposed Recommendations of a specification [1] and test-cases[2]. We
>> believe this is a mutually beneficial technology for XHTML, XML,
>> microformats, and RDF. However, our specification relies on the
>> URI-based extensibility of XHTML of the profile attribute of the head
>> element.
>>
>> We are worried, as GRDDL aims to be compatible with XHTML 1 and
>> therefore we would like to bring it to the attention of the XHTML2 WG,
>> as we would like for GRDDL to remain compatible with future versions of
>> XHTML such as XHTML2. However, it appears that XHTML2 is deprecating the
>> profile attribute. Is this true? If so, we would like to request it
>> *not* be deprecated, but that the profile attribute be kept in XHTML2.
>>
>> Any reviews or comments should be directed to
>> public-grddl-comments@w3.org [3].
>>
>> [1] http://www.w3.org/2004/01/rdxh/spec
>> [2] http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/grddl-wg/td/grddl-tests
>> [3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-grddl-comments/
>>
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 19 September 2007 12:18:53 UTC