Potential new TAG issue: Numeric LocalPart of QName held in attribute value

The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) [1] is 
developing a comprehensive News Architecture [2], which will serve as
the foundation for all new IPTC Standards and for new major versions
of existing IPTC Standards.  The IPTC News Metadata Framework WG has 
decided that:

-  URIs will be used to identify all resources, including terms used 
   as News metadata.

-  If at all possible, these resources will form part of the Semantic
   Web.

Owing to:

-  the large amount of metadata that may be present in a News object,

-  the need for compactness,

-  and the need for legibility

the WG has decided to use QNames in attribute values to represent
terms used as News metadata.  We are working closely with the W3C
RDF-in-XHTML Task Force on this and related issues.  During a recent
meeting, a glitch came to light, which is the reason for this mail.
The glitch is that:

a)  many News-related taxonomies use numeric codes, including:
    -  IPTC NewsCodes for Subjects [3]
    -  the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS(r)) [4]
    -  the Industry Classification Benchmark (ICB) [5]
    -  the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) [6]

b)  the Namespaces in XML specification states that:
    -  the LocalPart of a QName is an NCName
    -  the first char of an NCName is an NCNameStartChar
    -  an NCNameStartChar is any NameStartChar other than a colon

c)  the XML specification states that a NameStartChar cannot be a 
    digit

What are the options?  The only one we can think of right now is to
request that this constraint on the first char of a LocalPart be 
lifted if the QName is held in an attribute value.

I considered approaching the XML Core and XML Schema WGs, but as this
matter may be of broader interest, I am writing in the first instance
to the TAG.

[1] http://www.iptc.org/
[2] http://www.iptc.org/dev/
[3] http://www.iptc.org/NewsCodes/
[4] http://www.gics.standardandpoors.com/
[5] http://www.icbenchmark.com/
[6] http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/naics.html

Misha Wolf
Standards Manager, Reuters
Chair, IPTC News Metadata Framework WG



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Received on Tuesday, 19 July 2005 14:05:22 UTC