Re: RDF and xml:base

The major problem that I see with XML Base is that of
backwards-compatibility. XML Base can change the entire meaning of an RDF
document (by changing the URIs). Worse, depending on where in the document
it is placed, it can add additional triples to the output.

XML Base (as it rightly should be) is built on the fact that most RDF
applications ignore, or handle specially, attributes outside their
namespace. Unfortunately, RDF interprets all namespaces as part of the RDF
document, and thus many parsers will probably end up creating an extra
triple for XML Base in certain places. The others will probably choke on the
syntax error.

If RDF was to use XML Base, it wouldn't go in the work of the current RDF
Core group (since they're not really supposed to be adding to the spec) so
it would have to wait for something like RDF 2.0.

-- 
[ Aaron Swartz | me@aaronsw.com | http://www.aaronsw.com ]