Re: RDF in HTML pages

It turns out that HTML browser implementations don't care about validity
(w.r.t HTML DTDs) and will merrily ignore elements that they don't
recognize. Hence a RDDL document displays in an HTML browser just as an HTML
document -- this was and is an important, no *the most* (IHMO), important
reason that we selected this format for which to describe namespaces -- that
they are readable by humans using widely distributed browsers.

Like the reason RDF has an (alternate) attribute based syntax -- RDDL, using
an XLink syntax -- doesn't result in metadata being displayed in the
document. One benefit of the XLink syntax (and I really should have
mentioned this at the RDF IG F2F) is: Attribute values are explicitly URI
references not literals.

RDDL is quite valid according to its DTD (or pick a schema language of your
choice -- RDDL has more definitions than anything else going) and is a
proper extension of XHTML Basic. Is there a practical reason not to deploy
XHTML Basic content on the web in favor of HTML 3.2?

I can assure you that if _today's_ browsers choked on RDDL, that RDDL
wouldn't exist as it does today.

> Sorry, I should have been more specific. It doesn't work until good new
> things, and I am trying to find simple ways of dealing with old broken
(but
> not too badly) stuff that don't cause things to get further broken.
>

-Jonathan

Received on Friday, 9 March 2001 14:04:12 UTC