- From: <noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com>
- Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 17:42:14 -0400
- To: Shane McCarron <shane@aptest.com>
- Cc: www-tag@w3.org
This is both very helpful and very timely, as the discussion of the Self-Describing Web draft is scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday afternoon. Thank you to all of you who took the trouble to contribute to this very useful input to the discussions. Noah -------------------------------------- Noah Mendelsohn IBM Corporation One Rogers Street Cambridge, MA 02142 1-617-693-4036 -------------------------------------- Shane McCarron <shane@aptest.com> 05/19/2008 01:43 PM To: noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com cc: www-tag@w3.org Subject: Re: New draft of TAG Finding: The Self-Describing Web Noah et. al., The RDFa Task Force has not completed a formal reply to this document. However, I wanted to get you some personal but more-or-less authoritative feedback prior to your meeting this week. Sorry it is so late. In section 5.1 this document discusses using RDFa to produce self-describing HTML. First, thanks for including this important emerging technology in your finding. I have only a few comments: 1. The title and the section refer to HTML. To date we have not defined RDFa in terms of HTML, only in terms of XHTML. Please be sure that you are only referring to XHTML in this section. 2. The last paragraph reads in part "For this example document to be self-describing, the pertinent media type and the specifications on which it depends must provide for the use of RDFa in XHTML; at the time of this writing, they do not." The XHTML 2 Working Group disagrees with this statement. The Media Type definition [1] indicates that XHTML Family document types can use application/xhtml+xml. The specification [2] defines XHTML+RDFa, a markup language. Further, the specification declares that the document type is in fact part of that family. The specification also (obviously) defines how RDF is embedded in XHTML. So the specification, per force, defines the connection and enables the use use of RDFa in XHTML+RDFa. 3. You also mention in an Editorial note the XHTML namespace document. The XHTML 2 Working Group and the RDFa Task Force are investigating changing the namespace document so that it explicitly refers to a GRDDL transform that would extract RDF from documents using that namespace. This is dependent upon an XSLT implementation of RDFa - one is currently in development. However, once complete we hope it will satisfy your requirements in that a "follow-your-nose" approach will render a document "self-describing". However, there has been some discussion that having this in the XHTML Namespace Document (as defined in [3]) will obviate the need for other announcement mechanisms to be used in XHTML+RDFa documents (e.g., a DOCTYPE, SchemaLocation, @version attribute on the root element, or whatever). I for one would welcome input from the TAG on whether you believe this namespace document alteration is sufficient. 4. Finally, you have a reference to the Media Type declaration in the last paragraph. However, it says "XHMTLMediaType" instead of "XHTMLMediaType" ;-) [1] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3236.txt [2] http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2008/ED-rdfa-syntax-20080519/ [3] http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/REC-grddl-20070911/#ns-bind There may be other formal comments from the group in the future, but these are all I have captured to date. noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com wrote: I'm pleased to announce the availablity of a new draft of a W3C TAG Finding on "The Self-Describing Web". [1,2] There are a number of significant revisions, most of which were motivated by suggestions made by the TAG at the face to face meeting in February, 2008 [3]. I have also attempted to address the several suggestions I've received in email since the previous draft [4] was published. I expect that this new draft will be discussed at the upcoming face to face meeting of the TAG in Bristol, and it's my hope that we'll find it more or less ready for final publication. I know of at least two areas in which a little bit of further cleanup will be needed: * Tim Berners-Lee has asked me to include a diagram that he's prepared that shows in some detail the "algorithm" used to explore information on the Web. I have included it [5], but the only copy available to me is a .png that is not suitable for editing or cleanup. There are at least a few typos in it, and the size is a problem when printing. I'm hoping that Tim can get me the source, or else can help me get a cleaner copy for inclusion in the final finding. * I have updated the discussion on RDFa [6], reflecting in part the latest RDFa drafts [7,8] and also some guidance received from members of the group(s) working on RDFa. I encourage members of the TAG to satisfy themselves that the revised text conveys the right messages, and I of course encourage those involved with RDFa to make sure I haven't misunderstood their intentions. If that all goes OK, then we'll have to decide whether to point to the RDFa working drafts, or else to hold up the self-description finding until RDFa progresses. (FWIW: I'd really like to ship the self-desc. finding). Comments should be sent to the www-tag@w3.org mailing list. Thank you. Noah [1] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/selfDescribingDocuments.html [2] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/selfDescribingDocuments-2008-05-12.html [3] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2008/02/27-minutes#item04 [4] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/selfDescribingDocuments-2008-02-08.html [5] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/selfDescribingDocuments.html#AlgPicture -------------------------------------- Noah Mendelsohn IBM Corporation One Rogers Street Cambridge, MA 02142 1-617-693-4036 -------------------------------------- -- Shane P. McCarron Phone: +1 763 786-8160 x120 Managing Director Fax: +1 763 786-8180 ApTest Minnesota Inet: shane@aptest.com
Received on Monday, 19 May 2008 21:41:50 UTC