Re: Empty <rdf:RDF> [was Re: About Refactoring RDF/XML Syntax Rivision 1.43 ]

I'd like to consider this business of requiring <rdf:RDF> a little bit
further.  In particular, Section 2.2.2 says: 

> (P70) While the serialization syntax shows the structure of an RDF model most clearly, often it is 
> desirable to use a more compact XML form. The RDF abbreviated syntax accomplishes this. As a further 
> benefit, the abbreviated syntax allows documents obeying certain well-structured XML DTDs to be directly
> interpreted as RDF models.

Would requiring an explicit RDF tag mean that there are "certain
well-structured XML DTDs" which under the original rules could have been
directly interpreted as RDF (and which didn't contain an explicit RDF
tag) but couldn't under the change?  If so, I would think this a
problem, since being able to directly interpret XML as RDF would be a
big win IMO.  Do people think that it's unlikely that any XML would be
directly interpretable as RDF unless it was intended from the start to
be interpreted that way (and hence we could reasonably require an
explicit RDF tag)?  It's certainly true that the examples in Section
2.2.2 have such tags.  

--Frank


Dave Beckett wrote:
> 
snip
> 
> You are assuming <rdf:RDF>...</rdf:RDF> is required (which looks like
> something we are going to change the grammar to be) and defines
> the scope of an RDF graph, maybe inside a large XML document.
> 
> RDF M&S 1.0 says:
> 
>   The RDF element is a simple wrapper that marks the boundaries in an
>   XML document between which the content is explicitly intended to be
>   mappable into an RDF data model instance. The RDF element is
>   optional if the content can be known to be RDF from the application
>   context.
>   -- http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2001Jun/att-0021/00-part#54
> 
> At present we seem to be heading to change this to something like
> 
>   <rdf:RDF> marks the boundary of an RDF graph and is a required element.
> 
> but with more flowery words, and changing WD-to-be production 4.2 to
> match that, generate a good / bad test case.
> 
> Dave

-- 
Frank Manola                   The MITRE Corporation
202 Burlington Road, MS A345   Bedford, MA 01730-1420
mailto:fmanola@mitre.org       voice: 781-271-8147   FAX: 781-271-8752

Received on Thursday, 6 September 2001 12:41:27 UTC