closing the xlm-base issue Re: RDFCore Telecon Agenda 2001-06-29

I've got an objection to the proposal I wrote up which only occurred to
me the other day.

On Thu, 28 Jun 2001, Brian McBride wrote:

> ISSUE rdfms-xml-base Owner Jan Grant (10 mins)
>
>   http://www.w3.org/2000/03/rdf-tracking/#rdfms-xml-base
>
> Discuss Jan's proposal in:
>
>   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-rdfcore-wg/2001Jun/0340.html

The proposal I made (which was a summary of consensus as I understood it
in the telecon, not necessarily anything I'm advocating strongly) was a
change to paragraph 204:
	http://ioctl.org/rdf/ms/rdfms#204

And I said:

[quote]
There's already been some talk about fragment IDs, but I think it was
the first sentence that we decided needed expanding in scope. Something
simple such as this:

"...using the base URI of the document in which the RDF statements
appear.

In the case of RDF which is embedded within other XML, the base URI of
the embedded RDF shall be taken as the base URI of an element appearing
at the same position in the containing document. That is, the effect
of any mechanism that the containing document might use to specify a
base URI* is 'inherited' by the contained RDF.

In the case of serialised RDF which does not naturally have a base URI
(for instance, RDF transmitted as part of an HTTP request), the meaning
of
relative URIs is undefined, except where the transport protocol
specifies a mechanism for supplying a base URI, in which case that base
URI is used if supplied.

If a fragment identifier..."

It might need more wordsmithing, but that (I think) sums up the
discussion of 2001-06-15. If this meets with approval it ought to go on
the errata - however, I'm off for the remainder fo the week so
I'd appreciate it if someone else could pick this up from here.
[end quote]

This sounded plausible at the time; I recall Ron indicating that an
xhtml* (or suchlike) parser could "hand over" a base URI to an RDF
parser when dealing with embedded RDF. However, it occurs to me that we
might also want to just be able to have an RDF parser look through XML
for bits of embedded RDF and only process those; the wording above then
puts a burden on the RDF parser of not only parsing the surrounding XML
context, but grokking whatever arbitrary mechanisms it might use for
specifying an alternative base URI.

So while the proposed paragraphs above look plausible on first view,
they quickly descend into a hand-waving non-normative woolly fuzz**. I'm
aware that this issue is taking a lot of energy that might be more
profitably spent elsewhere. So I'm thinking it might be better to put
this issue on hold until someone wants to deal with the other half of
the story, which I think is issue rdfs-fragments:
	http://www.w3.org/2000/03/rdf-tracking/#rdfms-fragments

- unless anyone has any other suggestions? (Which I'd invite now)

jan

* substitute XML format of your choice here.
** yes, that's a technical term.

-- 
jan grant, ILRT, University of Bristol. http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/
Tel +44(0)117 9287163 Fax +44 (0)117 9287112 RFC822 jan.grant@bris.ac.uk
YKYBPTMRogueW... you try to move diagonally in vi.

Received on Thursday, 28 June 2001 10:46:48 UTC