RDF/XML Working Draft feedback
On Thursday, I talked with Dave Beckett on #echo about possible changes to the RDF/XML Syntax Specification. The current status of RDF/XML is that it is in a W3C Last Call Working Draft form - meaning that only minor corrections are accepted at this time. My inputs clearly go beyond that, but I will share them anyway on the off chance that they resonate with others and/or can be taken as input for the next round of the specification. I've ordered them roughly in order of priority:
- I understand the need for rdf:parseType, but requiring it on each instance of each element where it applies increases document size and decreases readability. There needs to be a way to factor this out.
- Requiring attributes to be namespace qualified seems unnecessarily inflexible. I would suggest treating unprefixed attributes as if they were in the namespace of their parent elements. Only treat it as an error if there already was an attribute with the same localName/namespace pair present.
- Introducing an rdf:parseType that indicates that a given attribute or element represents a URI would create more opportunity for obtaining 'grounding' information from a document.