Re: RDF in XHTML

"Sean B. Palmer" wrote:
> 
> From: Murray Altheim <mailto:altheim@eng.sun.com>:-
> 
> > I'm talking with my manager about scraping up some time to
> > devote to developing this idea into perhaps a W3C NOTE.
> 
> That's excellent news. We appreciate your time spent on this... I for
> one believe it will be extremely worthwhile, and I'm sure that many
> people agree with me. The synthesis of metadata with data content is
> something that should never be overlooked, but for some reason it got
> neglected for a long time... let's put it right.
> 
> > If you're willing to devote the lion's share of the prose content,
> 
> Yes, I am.

Great.  My biggest impediment lately is time, and I'm such a damned
perfectist that my specs take too long to write, whereas I've often
got the technical work already done.
 
[...]
> > I think along with such a NOTE we could advocate best practices
> > for use of the DTD, as well as a standardized syntax for linking to
> > external metadata,
> 
> s/could/should. We need to be very clear about the scope of what we
> are producing, including all of the theoretical and practical aspects
> of it. Recommendations, specifications, notes and so on are made for a
> purpose, not just for something to read and debate over!

Agreed. My only hesitation is any sort of assumption about best
practices absent dialogue from the real users of this specification.
If we can get some DC and RDF people to provide feedback, my 
reticence will vanish.

> > The whole thing should only be a few pages in length (apart from
> > the DTD).
> 
> Yes... Is there some list of best practises for commenting DTDs? I
> note that the m12n DTDs are very heavily annotated, which is great,
> but I'm not sure if that's a Murray-ism, an HTML WG-ism, or an XML DTD
> community-ism :-)

Those are almost completely Murray-isms learned over the years from
DTDs I considered easier-to-read or well-documented, supplemented from
the experience of working through m12n implementation details. I know
of no actual DTD standards in this regard.
 
> > the external link idea (with perhaps some indication of what's
> > at the other end of the link) might provide the necessary
> > mechanism to satisfy the 80/20 point.
> 
> Yes, although more work is needed on the behalf of the RDF community
> as well for identifying types of RDF, registering MIME types and so
> on. Would anyone really be all that bothered if I used
> application/rdf+xml for RDF now, even though unregistered?

This is again where my reticence plays in: I don't want to turn what
could be a two pager into a wild and long-winded debate about metadata,
theories of polymphsiperation and tugemcollidication, ending three years
from now in a W3C Recommendation. Just a simple NOTE on best practices.
*sigh* [everything is potentially like walking through a mimefield.]

Murray

...........................................................................
Murray Altheim, SGML/XML Grease Monkey     <mailto:altheim&#64;eng.sun.com>
XML Technology Center
Sun Microsystems, 1601 Willow Rd., MS UMPK17-102, Menlo Park, CA 94025

      the wood louse sits on a splinter and sings to the rising sap
      ain't it awful how winter lingers in springtimes lap -- archy

Received on Tuesday, 17 April 2001 18:15:30 UTC