Official Response to ISSUE-123 from RDF Web Apps WG

Hi Gregg, Richard,

Thank you for your public feedback on the RDFa 1.1 documents. This is an
official response from the RDF Web Apps WG to your issue before we enter
the 3rd Last Call for the RDFa 1.1 work this coming Tuesday. The Last
Call will last for 3 weeks, so there is still time for you to discuss
your concerns if we have not fully addressed them.

Your issue was tracked here:

ISSUE-123: Should RDFa Core 1.1 introduce the concept of an HTMLLiteral?
https://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/track/issues/123

Explanation of Issue
--------------------

You had asked the Working Group to consider the addition of an
HTMLLiteral datatype:

"""
I recently sent some feedback to the RDF WG on the use of XML Literals.
The use of XML Literals in RDFa has often been problematic in tests,
due, in part, to the need for XML Exclusive Canonicalization. Moreover,
as XML Literal is used in RDFa principally to create literals including
HTML markup, the fact that it's an XML Literal increasingly becomes a
problem. It was more appropriate when all host languages are XML based
(XHTML, SVG), but with HTML-based languages the content could just as
easily be tag-soup.
"""

Additionally, Richard Cyganiak had the following input:

"""
What you're saying is that rdf:XMLLiteral is being abused to indicate
the presence of general HTML markup. This abuse indicates the existence
of an important unmet need. The response should be a call for meeting
that need, and not necessarily a call for changing rdf:XMLLiteral to
legalize the abuse.
"""

To which you responded:

"""
We should think about introducing this datatype and treating it
similarly to rdf:XMLLiteral, but without the canonicalization
requirements. There are arguments for either doing no processing (i.e.
L2V just like xsd:string), or coercing to an infoset and using
well-structured HTML, but I think this might be overkill for the
intended applications.
"""

Working Group Decision
----------------------

We discussed the issue here:

http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/meetings/2011-12-15#ISSUE__2d_123__3a__HTMLLiterals

The Working Group decided to leave the issue open and determine if
something needed to be done for the HTML5+RDFa specifications, since
that is where HTMLLiterals would make the most amount of sense. That is,
we ensured that HTMLLiterals are not prohibited by any RDFa Core 1.1,
and RDFa Lite 1.1 specification language. If the RDF WG creates an
HTMLLiteral datatype, the Working Group will revisit the issue at that
point.

RESOLVED: Ensure that language in XHTML+RDFa 1.1 does not prevent the
implementation of an HTMLLiteral datatype in the future. Ensure that
HTML+RDFa 1.1 is not prevented from implementing an HTMLLiteral datatype.

http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/meetings/2011-12-15#resolution_1

Feedback
--------

Since this is an official Working Group response to your issue, we would
appreciate it if you responded to this e-mail and let us know if the
decision made by the group is acceptable to you as soon as possible.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: PaySwarm vs. OpenTransact Shootout
http://manu.sporny.org/2011/web-payments-comparison/

Received on Saturday, 28 January 2012 19:03:55 UTC