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Re: Re: URIs, concrete

• To: bill.dehora@p...
• Subject: Re: Re: URIs, concrete
• From: Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@f...>
• Date: Thu, 01 Aug 2002 09:50:23 -0600
• Cc: "'John Cowan'" <jcowan@r...>, "'Simon St.Laurent'" <simonstl@s...>, jborden@a..., xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: Message from Bill de hÓra <bill.dehora@p...> of "Thu, 01 Aug 2002 16:24:31 BST." <001c01c2396f$89a32a00$1fc8c8c8@mitchum>
• Sender: uche.ogbuji@f...

> 
> > From: uche.ogbuji@f... 
> >
> > It's not to late to fix RDF in this area.  It is still WD.  
> 
> You crticise this decision in RDFXML with allusions to the "Right Thing"
> and the "spirit of XML". Can you say what is wrong with this approach,
> or is it just a matter of taste?

Bill, you know better than that, though I assume it suits you to pretend you 
don't.  If you observed the discussion on www-rdf-interest you'll know I give 
plenty of technical reason.  Still, since not everyone here is privy, so I 
have no qualms with repeating them.

1) The RDFWG decision confounds attributes with a syntactic function, such as 
about, resource, ID and parseType, with ones with a semantic function, such as 
dc:title and rdf:type.

2) The RDFWG decision essentiall makes all RDF attributes "global" attributes, 
according to the XML NS definition, which loosens their coupling from their 
owner element, which makes no sense given the tight coupling of meaning 
between the two.

3) The RDFWG decision goes against the common practice in XML NS applications 
of only prefixing global attributes.  XSLT is the good example of this:

<xsl:transform version="1.0"/>

<html:html xsl:version="1.0"/>

Whereas RDF's convention would mandate xml:version for both.

4) The RDFWG decision invalidates the vast body of existing RDF code.  I'm not 
a stickler for backwards compat, but good reason should be given for such a 
break.  The RDFWG's reasons are ludicrously weak.

There is more, but the points above are more than enough to rubbish the 
decision, IMO.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                                    Fourthought, Inc.
http://uche.ogbuji.net    http://4Suite.org    http://fourthought.com
Track chair, XML/Web Services One Boston: http://www.xmlconference.com/
Basic XML and RDF techniques for knowledge management, Part 7 - 
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think12.html
Keeping pace with James Clark - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/libra
ry/x-jclark.html
Python and XML development using 4Suite, Part 3: 4RDF - 
http://www-105.ibm.com/developerworks/education.nsf/xml-onlinecourse-bytitle/8A
1EA5A2CF4621C386256BBB006F4CEC

• References:
  • RE: Re: URIs, concrete
    • From: Bill de hÓra <bill.dehora@p...>

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