Re: XHTML2 and metainformation

On 5/15/03 3:19 AM, "Robin Lionheart" <w3c-ml@robinlionheart.com> wrote:

> 
> Ernest Cline wrote:
>> Here is a proposal of how to resolve both problems.
>> 
>> <ml profile="http://www.dublincore.org">
>>   <mi name="Publisher">DC Comics</mi>
>> </ml>
>> <ml profile="http://www.dccomics.com">
>>   <mi name="Publisher">Karen Berger</mi>
>> </ml>
> 
> The HTML 4.0 syntax for setting metadata schemas:
> 
> <head profile="http://www.dublincore.org">
>   <meta name="DC.publisher">DC Comics</meta>
> </head>
> 
> does have the limitation of not handling multiple profiles.

No.  You may have multiple profiles separated by white space:

<blockquote cite="http://w3.org/TR/html401/struct/global.html#adef-profile">
profile = URI [CT]
This attribute specifies the location of one or more meta data profiles,
separated by white space. For future extensions, user agents should consider
the value to be a list even though this specification only considers the
first URI to be significant.
</blockquote>

The error in HTML4.01 is that the type is specified as URI, where it should
be specified as URIs in order to comply with the prose.  This error may have
been propagated to the latest XHTML2 draft.


> The syntax also
> implies that your "Keywords" and "Description" metas are part of your Dublic
> Core metadata.

I don't think neither this, nor a "Dublin Core" metadata scheme is implied.


> Your proposal is better, but I don't think a cryptic two-letter tag like
> <ml> is necessary for such an uncommon element, and we already have <meta>
> so why introduce <mi>?

I agree with this reasoning.


> I propose instead:
> 
> <schema profile="http://www.dccomics.com">
>  <meta name="Publisher">Karen Berger</meta>
> </schema>

I'm not sure how much sense it makes to specify this level of metadata
schema detail in HTML.  For instance, is the name "Publisher" in the
previous example a name global to HTML, or is it defined by
"http://www.dccomics.com" and then used?

If the latter, and the intent is to attempt to contain all the <meta> that
uses a particular profile within the declaration for that profile, this
fails to solve the linktype case, which allows profiles to extend the values
of the 'rel' and 'rev' attributes, which can/are then used on <a href="">
tags etc., certainly outside of any metadata schema declaration.

Tantek

Received on Thursday, 15 May 2003 14:33:35 UTC