Re: XHTML2: Proposal for total separation of semantics from structure

Orion Adrian schreef:

> Well there are two pieces to semantics, property and the other is the
> value (i.e. the idea/object that this links to). @property represents
> which property you're working with, but not the actual thing you're
> linking to. Would would have to have something else there. What
> syntax/grammar were you thinking about?
>   

I’m not thinking of any syntax, the property attribute is already there 
in XHTML:

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/mod-metaAttributes.html

My classes about RDF went in one ear and out the other (that may not be 
an actual English proverb, but it is a Dutch one :)), so I’m not 
particularly knowledgeable on this subject, but...

RDF statements consists of triples: subject, predicate, object. In the 
XHTML meta-information attributes module, a |property| and |about| 
attribute are defined, and those afaik apply to any element, not just to 
|<meta>| tags as shown in the examples. The property contains the 
predicate, the about the subject, and the object is the contents of the 
element itself. If about is not specified, the object is the current 
document as a whole.

See also sections 23.3. 
<http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/mod-metaAttributes.html#sec_23.3.> and 
23.4. <http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/mod-metaAttributes.html#sec_23.4.> in 
the above mentioned document, it has a number of examples...

The rest depends on the RDF ontology that you’re using. XHTML specifies 
a number of things, and Dublin Core some others. There could be a 
content meta-information ontology as well... Although I don’t know how 
that would work precisely...

|property="dfn"| without |about| attribute makes sense because the 
markup is meant to be used on a global document-level (|about=""|), so 
the statement says ‘this is a defining instance in (about) this document’.

|property="address"| would either apply to the whole document without 
|about|, or refer to someone/something specific when an |about| is present.

|property="em"| however doesn’t really work, I think. What is the 
relation of the emphasis? Certainly not the whole document... But as I 
said, I’m not particularly knowledgeable about RDF :). Maybe I’m 
confusing things.


~Grauw

-- 
Ushiko-san! Kimi wa doushite, Ushiko-san!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Laurens Holst, student, university of Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Website: www.grauw.nl. Backbase employee; www.backbase.com.