quick review of the PRISM spec

notes on
PRISM: Publishing Requirements for
Industry Standard Metadata
"Public Last Call" for Version 1.0
March 5, 2001
http://www.prismstandard.org/only/lastcalldraft.pdf
as I read it.

Overall, good stuff! My comments are all nits...

Sorry if these notes are too cryptic... I hope to elaborate eventually,
but I figure better send these now than file them away and risk
not sending them at all...

* rights expression separate from enforcement: good choice.
(cf recent W3C rights management workshop@@)

* definitions out of context: poor editorial technique (cf my comments on
Xlink@@)

* "one or more properties" -- in RDF, a property is a label on an arc, not
the arc itself.
so this wording isn't consistent with RDF. Not critical, but if using "one
or more statements"
isn't too awkward, consider it.

* 2.1 scenario: good editorial technique.

* <dc:creator>Abraham Lincoln</dc:creator>
beware: persons versus names of persons
also: <prism:rightsAgent>Phantasy Photos, Philadelphia</prism:rightsAgent>
also: [[
Many elements, such as dc:subject, may take a string as a value, or may use
a URI for identifying an
element in a controlled vocabulary of subject description codes. The URI may
be a simple reference, or
may provide an inline description of the controlled vocabulary term.
Implementations MUST be capable of
handling all three of those cases reliably.
]]

* <dc:coverage rdf:resource="iso3166-2:gr" />
er... the iso3166-2 URI scheme is new to me; are you registering
it?

* <dc:identifier rdf:resource="wanderlust:2357845" />
whoa! don't give folks the impression they can create their own
URI schemes just like that.

* 4.3 PRISM MIME Type
The Internet Media Type (aka MIME type) for PRISM descriptions is 6
"application/prism+rdf+xml".

er... isn't the convention */xml+*? I should double-check the recent RFC...

* xmlns:prism="http://prismstandard.org/namespaces/1.0/basic/"
I recommend "...basic#" rather than "...basic/", because "...basic/"
necessarily
denotes an HTTP resource, i.e. a sort of generic document (i.e. a thing
that responds to GET requests), but RDF properties and classes
might turn out to be disjoint from HTTP resources. "...basic#foo" isn't
constrained the way "...basic/foo" is. (@@does this make any sense?
Ask TimBL about it if you get a chance.)

* 4.8.2 Constraint 2: rdf:aboutEachPrefix disallowed
probably wise.

* "XML DTDs cannot describe such a flexible content model, so no DTD is
provided in this specification 11 ."
I bet you can describe it with an XML Schema; I've got some stuff you might
want to start from.
Ah... you're already on to this: "11 A validation tool based on XML Schemas
is being developed.".

* <dc:subject rdf:resource="NAICS:21"/>
more unregistered URI schemes?

* bird's-eye
using a single-quote in a name is likely to be problematic. Don't go there.

I hope to provide more details about these comments and give the PRISM
spec another, closer, review. But that's what I found in the first reading.
I really like the liberal use of scenarios and examples; terms take on
meaning by use, and using the terms in examples in the spec is a
good way to get the use of the terms off the ground.

--
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Thursday, 8 March 2001 09:45:52 UTC