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David Megginson wrote: > > > I took it the same way. But doesn't that violate the principle of > > XML as being self-describing? > > First, there is no such published principle for XML itself, though the > Namespaces spec provides an infrastructure for such a thing. Debatably the principle of self-describing-ness is encoded in both the XML declaration (unfortunately optional!) and the DOCTYPE declaration. > Second, it in no way violates it, because if you recognise the > namespaces/elements being used, you can still figure out that you're > dealing with RDF (and if not, fat lot of good they'll do you anyway). Wouldn't it be useful for a generic RDF processor (e.g. viewer, search engine) to be able to recognize RDF in arbitrary documents? Personally, I do feel that the optional RDF element is a bad idea. I have had many bad experiences with "implied declarations" like <!DOCTYPE HTML ...> and <!SGML ...>. "Say what you are!" In this case the obvious way for RDF elements to say that they are RDF elements without enforcing a particular vocabulary would be to use attributes -- but that sounds like a smelly old SGML-ish idea. -- Paul Prescod - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for only himself http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco "If you were casting Bob Kane's character by disposition, you would never in a million years think Michael Keaton or George Clooney. Good God: George Clooney? If you were casting Bob Kane's Batman, even the likes of Tim Roth or Christopher Walken would be much too lighthearted to play this demonic avenger." - http://www.salonmagazine.com/feature/1998/11/06feature.html xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
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