- From: <noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com>
- Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2008 20:53:56 -0400
- To: www-tag@w3.org
- Cc: "Steven Pemberton" <steven.pemberton@cwi.nl>, "Mark Baker" <distobj@acm.org>, Ben Adida <ben@mit.edu>
As I have mentioned previously on this list, I am trying to wrap up the TAG finding on the Self-Describing Web [1], and the major unresolved question is whether there is a chain of normative specifications, presumably starting with the media type registration for application/xhtml+xml [2], that justifies the inference of RDF triples in an XHTML document that uses RDFa. I have posed this question several times [3,4], and although I've received some notes with helpful insights [5,6], I don't believe anyone has stepped up to either say conclusively: "yes, here are the pertinent clauses of the pertinent normative specifications" or "no, RDFa is not currently supported as self-describing content using HTTP GET; a user agent that infers triples from an application/xhtml+xml representation retrieved using HTTP is, at least in principle, running some risk that the representation was not intended to be interpreted in that manner." I am very close to the point where it is not worth holding up the finding on this question. So, I would first of all be very grateful if one or more of you could help me resolve the question on the facts. Also, I want to signal that lacking such clarity, I will within a couple of days propose to move ahead with a story along the lines of: "The community has been unable to reach consensus at this time as to whether the pertinent normative specifications provide for an HTTP client to do RDFa processing on a representation labeled with media-type application/xhtml+xml. While the risk of unintended consequences of such processing is likely low in practice (I.e. because the markup used for RDFa is very unlikely to be used for other purposes), RDFa cannot at this time be considered a good example of self-describing Web content.", or words to that effect. If you think the story is better than this, and can cite chapter and verse to prove it, I'd be delighted to hear the details. Please note that I must publish a draft within the next 2-3 days if TAG members are to have appropriate time for review ahead of our F2F meeting in 2 weeks; I am hoping to get final clearance for issuance of the finding at that meeting. Thank you. Noah [1] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/selfDescribingDocuments.html [2] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3236.txt [3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2008Aug/0116.html [4] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2008Aug/0120.html [5] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2008Aug/0117.html [6] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2008Aug/0118.html -------------------------------------- Noah Mendelsohn IBM Corporation One Rogers Street Cambridge, MA 02142 1-617-693-4036 --------------------------------------
Received on Tuesday, 9 September 2008 00:53:26 UTC