- From: Joshua Allen <joshuaa@microsoft.com>
- Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 01:53:47 -0700
- To: "Murray Altheim" <altheim@eng.sun.com>, "Seth Russell" <seth@robustai.net>
- Cc: "Danny Ayers" <danny@panlanka.net>, "Sean B. Palmer" <sean@mysterylights.com>, "RDF Interest" <www-rdf-interest@w3.org>
> I long ago gave up proselytizing validation; if you don't feel it's > important, go right ahead and create well-formed XML. I find validation > in most instances to be worth the trouble, like I find a Java debugger > helpful. If you've got an XHTML plus SVG document and its acting up, > I hope you have a DTD. > On the other hand ... the XHTML DTD certainly does not provide assurances that the script contained in a <script>..</script> block is valid, nor does it give you any help when debugging the CSS in your <style>...</style> block. In fact, I would be concerned if the XHTML spec decided to take on the burden of validating scripts and styles, just as I think it is out-of-scope for the spec to be placing mandates on the metadata that ships with a page. I think I see your point about the <rdf>...</rdf> element, though -- if you defined such an element as (#PCDATA) it would still break as soon as we stuck XML with any namespaces in there. Is that a correct assessment of your reluctance? It seems rather ironic that XHTML can happily validate purely random text in particular elements, but pukes as soon as that text becomes well-formed. In other words, if I decided to use a new scripting language that was based on XML and namespaces, as soon as I use it in my <script /> block, the page won't validate -- XHTML: use anything but XML.. > is going to make validation of six or seven author-designed namespaces > by *any* methodology extremely difficult. XHTML modularization doesn't This is the problem of RDF, isn't it? In fact, the Cambridge Communiqué [1] seemed to conclude that XML Schema is *not* necessarily appropriate for RDF, and RDF is meant to be used with the RDF-Schema spec instead. > web pages will likely be quite a bit more difficult if the markup isn't > valid. In fact, a lot more difficult. I've got a small Java application I think you are right about this one. > (kinda lost track). I don't think you're going to see a stronger set of > semantic elements inside of XHTML, nor do I see a trend toward improving That seems wise. > read up on HTML and can make web pages. It'd be an order of magnitude > easier to get them to use <author> and <abstract> elements than to use > some funky namespace markup, but the direction isn't that way. Sorta I can see what you mean here -- I am not so sure that the ultimate goal of RDF is to provide for a common set of semantics that everyone agrees upon, though. Dublin Core, for example, has built a lot of consensus, and is therefore a sort of "de-facto" metadata markup. But this makes RDF (in a way) irrelevant to DC's goals (DC does more for RDF than RDF does for DC in the year 2001). RDF is exactly about how to do metadata when you *can't* get everyone to agree (which seems to be a safe assumption these days). It allows people to build and evolve their own tools while still providing something of a bridge to the future. This is why I compare the metadata section to the <style>...</style> block and point to the W3C opinion that RDF Schema is independent of XML Schema. RDF is meant to be incredibly abstract and processed by machines that may or may not understand various pieces of the RDF. You're right that a messed up RDF statement could be very expensive to a company, but again I feel the validation of RDF statements is the problem of RDF and not XHTML. Regards, Joshua [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/NOTE-schema-arch-19991007
Received on Monday, 16 April 2001 05:11:54 UTC