ISSUE-70: RDFa Core 1.1 LC comments about versioning from Jeni Tennison

Core - Jeni Tennison 1

RDFa Core 1.1 LC comments about versioning from Jeni Tennison

State:

CLOSED

Product:

LC Comment - RDFa Core 1.1

Raised by:

Manu Sporny

Opened on:

2011-01-04

Description:

From Jeni Tennison:

So to the first, large, technical point: the lack of information about versioning. Having read through the RDFa Core LC WD and the XHTML+RDFa LC WD, I can't see anything that addresses versioning except for the removal of the version attribute (which was the mechanism for indicating the version of RDFa being used provided by RDFa 1.0).

There are a number of backwards-incompatible changes in RDFa 1.1, some of which are called out in Appendix C.1 [1], such as:

* the introduction of the prefix attribute
* the introduction of terms and profiles
* the interpretation of complex content lacking an explicit datatype as a plain literal rather than an XML literal

As someone managing a large site that produces RDFa, the questions I need answered are:

1. What are the minimal steps I need to take to ensure that my RDFa 1.0 site continues to be interpreted in the same way by an RDFa 1.1 processor?
2. When I move to using RDFa 1.1, how do I ensure that my site is interpreted in the same way by an RDFa 1.0 processor as it is by RDFa 1.1 processors?

As a developer of an RDFa processor, the questions I need answered are:

3. Can my processor be both a conformant RDFa 1.0 processor and a conformant RDFa 1.1 processor?
4. If not, what modes of processing do I have to offer in order to best enable users of the processor to correctly interpret RDFa 1.0 and RDFa 1.1 web pages in the way their authors intended?

The only answer that I think that I know is to Question 3: "no", a processor cannot be both a conformant RDFa 1.0 processor and a conformant RDFa 1.1 processor.

[In my opinion, the fact that this new version of RDFa is not backwards compatible with RDFa 1.0 really should mean that it is numbered as 2.0.]

I think it's absolutely necessary that a section on backwards compatibility is created that answers the above questions.

I would suggest that you try hard to make it possible for RDFa processors to be both conformant RDFa 1.0 processors and conformant RDFa 1.1 processors, as I think not doing so will make it harder for both those managing RDFa websites and those creating RDFa processors. You could do this by introducing a notion of a 'backwards-compatible mode' that is triggered by the presence of the version="XHTML+RDFa 1.0" attribute that SHOULD be present in RDFa 1.0 documents. The processing of RDFa 1.1 would be dependent on this mode; for example, when in 'backwards-compatible mode', the object of a triple created for an element with complex content and no datatype attribute would be an XML literal rather than a plain literal. (The approach of having a 'backwards-compatible mode' has worked fairly well for XSLT 1.0/2.0.)

I would also like to see something that will provide a method for the next version of RDFa (should there be one) to be backwards compatible with this one. Deprecating @version because it 'doesn't scale well as a language announcement mechanism' (and I'm not sure what that means) is fine, but I can't see what you've actually replaced it with?

Related Actions Items:

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Related emails:

1. RDFa WG telecon minutes for 2011-03-24 (from msporny@digitalbazaar.com on 2011-03-24)
2. RDFa Last Call responses (from msporny@digitalbazaar.com on 2011-03-08)
3. ISSUE-70: REVISED Formal Response (from shane@aptest.com on 2011-03-02)
4. Re: ISSUE-70: PROPOSED response to Jeni (from ivan@w3.org on 2011-02-19)
5. Re: ISSUE-70: PROPOSED response to Jeni (from shane@aptest.com on 2011-02-19)
6. Re: ISSUE-70: PROPOSED response to Jeni (from ivan@w3.org on 2011-02-19)
7. Re: ISSUE-70: Formal Response (from shane@aptest.com on 2011-02-18)
8. Re: ISSUE-70: PROPOSED response to Jeni (from shane@aptest.com on 2011-02-18)
9. ISSUE-70: Formal Response (from shane@aptest.com on 2011-02-18)
10. ISSUE-70: PROPOSED response to Jeni (from shane@aptest.com on 2011-02-18)
11. RDFa WG telecon minutes for 2011-02-17 (from msporny@digitalbazaar.com on 2011-02-17)
12. Preparing Official LC Responses (from msporny@digitalbazaar.com on 2011-02-06)
13. ISSUE-70 (Core - Jeni Tennison): RDFa Core 1.1 LC comments about versioning from Jeni Tennison [LC Comment - RDFa Core 1.1] (from sysbot+tracker@w3.org on 2011-01-04)

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