RDF considered optional

Wed Mar 17 22:48:02 GMT 1999

I took it the same way. But doesn't that violate the principle of XML as being self-describing? The document is now tied to a specific set of applications, rather than only being tied to any applications that are capable of reading and understanding a schema. I suspect either I or the spec are being a little pedantic here; given that there is a namespace specifier, the application will always know what it's dealing with, but something feels wrong about binding a description language to an application context.

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-xml-dev at ic.ac.uk [mailto:owner-xml-dev at ic.ac.uk]On Behalf Of
John Cowan
Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 1999 2:23 PM
To: XML Dev
Subject: Re: RDF considered optional

Jeffrey E. Sussna wrote:

> The RDF syntax spec states that "The RDF element is optional if the
> content can be known to be RDF from the application context."
> 
> Can anyone clarify exactly what is meant by "application context"?

I take that to mean that if the application already knows it is
dealing with RDF, no RDF element is required.  It's just a container
for the true RDF anyway.

-- 
John Cowan	http://www.ccil.org/~cowan		cowan at ccil.org
	You tollerday donsk?  N.  You tolkatiff scowegian?  Nn.
	You spigotty anglease?  Nnn.  You phonio saxo?  Nnnn.
		Clear all so!  'Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5)

xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa at ic.ac.uk)