Re: TAG Comment on: http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-role/#sec_3.1.

Stuart,

I have redirected your comment to our issue tracking system so you will 
receive a formal response from the working group.  The XHTML 2 Working 
Group just had a face to face meeting last week, so will not meet to 
consider your comment for three weeks. 

My immediate (informal) response is that CURIEs are currently used in 
mostly new contexts.  If a CURIE is to be used in a context where a 
value could also be a URI, a "safe_curie" production is also defined 
(the CURIE is enclosed in brackets).  See the RDFa Syntax document 
(http://www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-syntax) for examples of this, in particular 
on the definitions of @resource and @about. 

It is not our intent that a CURIE be used in a context where a 
URIReference is currently used (e.g., @href) unless we explicitly break 
backward compatibility.  Specifically, as an example, we do not intend 
to introduce an updated XHTML M12N 1-compatible module where @href takes 
a URIorCURIE, since markup languages based upon M12N 1 are more or less 
compatible with existing user agents and changing the processing 
requirements of well-known attributes would not be a service to our 
constituents.

Note that CURIEs are intended to be a superset of QNames, and therefore 
are suitable for use anywhere a QName is used as an attribute value 
today.  We know that in the past the TAG and others have expressed 
concern about the (mis)use of QNames in attribute values.  We agree that 
such a use of QNames can be problematic, and hope that by instead using 
CURIEs in these contexts we can avoid QNames' attendant problems.


Williams, Stuart (HP Labs, Bristol) wrote:
> Dear XHTML Editors,
>
> Please can you clarify your intentions with respect to the use of CURIE's. In particular the TAG would like to understand whether the intention is that CURIE's be useable in existing elements/attribute where URIReferences are places are already in use, or only in new(?) elements and attributes where use of CURIEs is specifically called out.
>
> The TAG is particularly concerned about how existing processors are expected to behave in the presense of markup containing CURIEs if they are to be used in places where existing processors URIReferences.
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Stuart Williams
> on behalf of W3C TAG
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Received on Monday, 12 November 2007 17:24:57 UTC