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Re: RDF syntax

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: RDF syntax
• From: "Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@c...>
• Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 00:22:57 -0500
• In-reply-to: <6.0.0.22.1.20031102202644.01f12d70@p...>
• References: <6.0.0.22.1.20031102202644.01f12d70@p...>
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Toni Uusitalo wrote:


> But I was shocked when I started browsing through RDF syntax spec 
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-rdf-syntax-grammar-20030905/ and came to
>  2.5 Property Attributes where it says: "When a property element's 
> content is string literal, it may be possible to use it as an XML 
> attribute on the containing node element. This can be done for 
> multiple properties on the same node element only if the property 
> element name is not repeated "...
> 
> compared to section 2.4 Empty Property Elements' Example 5 what's 
> gained with this "abbreviation" but maybe that "the most horrible 
> markup usage award" or something?!
> 

It seems that putting literal values into an attribute was motivated by
wanting ordinary browsers not to display them - browsers will normally
display element content even for unknown element types, but will ignore
unknown attributes.  So if you wanted to embed rdf data into a web page
and  not have it displayed (so as not to confuse a humna reader),
attributes are a convenient way to do so.

As David Megginson said -

"... RDF's flexible syntax is well-designed for embedding in Web pages, 
but unfortunately, it turns out that almost no one wants to do that.

... As a result, it might be fair to conclude that RDF's syntactic
flexibility was a kind of premature optimization, a lot of work to
accomodate premature requirements."

Cheers,

Tom P

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