FW: First Draft of RDF, differences from my notes.

[Andrew Layman]

After reading the RDF paper, I posted the following message to the RDF
working group.  Since the RDF paper is now posted to the XML dev mailing
list, these comments are relevant in the new context.

--Andrew Layman
   AndrewL at microsoft.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Andrew Layman 
> Sent:	Friday, August 01, 1997 4:24 PM
> To:	w3c-labels-wg at w3.org; w3c-dsig-collect at w3.org
> Subject:	First Draft of RDF, differences from my notes.
> 
> Thank you for the early draft of the paper. In reading it over, I've
> found a number of points that differ from my recollection of our
> Boston meeting. Perhaps my notes and memory are wrong on some of these
> points (in which case I welcome correction) but it also appears that
> some new features have crept into the document:
> 
> 2.	We only agreed on ablocks describing single resources. I
> remember discussing having an RDF assertion block describe
> characteristics of more than one resource, but concluding that this is
> a difficult problem with great risk of user confusion. (I'm not
> opposed to solving this problem; just want to note that we did not
> solve it but left it for the future.)
> 
> 2.4	I don't remember us ever finding a satisfactory way for the
> ablock to actually contain its target resource (because the
> subelements of an ablock are interpreted as properties of the ablock's
> target).
> 
> 2.	We discussed the need for a small set of base data types, which
> I believe were strings, numbers and dates/times.  We also talked at
> length about the need to distinguish between a base semantic type such
> as date and a particular format such as ISO8061. The sentance
> beginning "The domain of property values..." does not reflect dates or
> the semantic/format distinction.
> 
> 3.	I don't remember agreement on refTypeAttr.  Did we but I don't
> have it in my notes?
> 
> 3.	We most definitely did not agree that the first namespace
> element sets a default namespace!  We did agree, tentatively, that we
> might make the "as" attribute optional, where its omission could
> signal that it was to be the default namespace for its containing
> element (with the caveat that this needs more thought).  We also
> discussed that a namespace attribute on the containing element might
> be a better way to achieve the same effect.
> 
> 3.	I remember discussing listItem, but don't remember ever nailing
> it down precisely or agreeing on it.
> 
> Example 5.1.1.	This simply needs to be clarified. I think what
> is meant is that an ablock with no href has as its implied target the
> entirety of the enclosing document.
> 
> 5.2.3	The note at the bottom makes the assertion that a downlevel
> application can blindly concatenate together elements it does not
> understand. My recollection is that we discussed this, concluded that
> such a policy is dangerous and presumes to dictate processing. We did
> agree to investigate adding some standard attribute that might signal
> when such a policy is reasonable. We identified three values for such
> an attribute: (a) ignore the unknown element, (b) ignore the unknown
> tag, (c) application cannot process this element or any peer.
> 
> I don't mean these comments to be interpreted as disagreements with
> any aspect of the RDF design, but rather as a report on differences
> between my notes and the current paper.
> 
> --Andrew Layman
>    AndrewL at microsoft.com
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Ralph R. Swick [SMTP:swick at w3.org]
> Sent:	Friday, August 01, 1997 9:49 AM
> To:	w3c-labels-wg at w3.org; w3c-dsig-collect at w3.org
> Subject:	First draft of RDF specification for review
> 
> The first draft of the Resource Description Framework Model and Syntax
> specification (Lassila & Swick, eds.) is now ready for your review and
> comment.
> 
>   http://www.w3.org/Member/9708/WD-rdf-syntax-970801.html
> 
> I would like to ask this working group's permission to distribute
> this draft to w3c-xml-sig.  xml-sig is the forum where technical
> discussions of XML are ocurring and they particularly need to see
> our requirements for the namespace tag.  The only reason I ask your
> consent is that while xml-sig is a W3C Members forum, it has quite
> a few non-Member invited experts.  I will distribute this draft to
> that list at 1600UTC on Monday, August 5 unless I hear serious
> objections before then.
> 
> Thanks to all who have contributed thus far, and to each of you who
> will take the time to review and make suggestions for improvement.
> 
> -Ralph and Ora

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