Re: New Draft of TAG Finding "The Self-Describing Web"

That's a great start, Noah.  Some comments as I go through it ...

- I'd suggest not using "application/xml" in your example in sec 2 (or
in 4.4) because in practice it's used primarily in a non-descriptive
way, i.e. as a catch-all for all XML content with a (non-grounded)
presumption that the transfer semantics are indicated by the namespace
of the root element of the document, rather than by using a more
specific XML media type.  You may even want to mention this as an
example of how not to be self-descriptive, and include a reference to
the authoritative metadata finding.

- in section 4.1, it might be getting too detailed, but perhaps you
could mention the relative cost of deploying a new element from each
layer, justifying a best practice such as "if you can define your
extension as a new media type, prefer that over defining a new URI
scheme", etc..

- in 4.3, I'm with Dave on this, RDF shouldn't be considered
preferred.  At best it could be considered the self-descriptive
approach which is furthest along the standardization path.  Similarly,
for RDFa and GRDDL, I don't think either needs to called out except as
an example.

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.         http://www.markbaker.ca
Coactus; Web-inspired integration strategies  http://www.coactus.com

Received on Wednesday, 27 February 2008 05:22:53 UTC