Re: [syndication] Re: Thoughts, questions, and issues.

[Ken MacLeod <ken@bitsko.slc.ut.us>]

Gabe Beged-Dov <begeddov@jfinity.com> writes:

> The example you mention (I've excerpted the fragment below) seems to
> be a little off since the subject element is defined to have PCDATA
> (i.e. plain-text) content in the dublin core module [1] while it is
> defined to have a single rdf:Description element as its content in
> the taxonomy module [2].
> 
> The example shows the subject element as being from the dublin core
> module yet uses the content model of the subject element in the
> taxonomy module. I'm guessing that this is an editing snafu or an
> open issue that we need to work on.

I would think that using <dc:subject> would be the same regardless of
which module it comes from, so I would treat that as an open issue.

> Either way, you can process the document totally in the XML
> syntactic domain without any RDF awareness. If you see a reason that
> it can't be processed unambiguously using straight XML tools, please
> let us know.  Other than the fact that you may find the RDF
> syntactic sugar aestetically unpleasing, it shouldn't impact your
> ability to process RSS10 using RDF unaware tools. This should be
> true both on the producer and consumer sides of things.
> 
> Module authors will always document the content model for the one
> true XML syntax of thier module. If the author decides to use RDF,
> they will have to choose the one RDF/XML syntax they want to use.

As long as the content model goes deeper than simply
<rdf:Description>, I may agree there.  AFAIK, though, DTDs and XML
Scheme provide no way to distinguish an <rdf:Description> within one
element as different from an <rdf:Description> within another element.
This means that any detail on the available properties to look for
will show up only in documentation.

Note, I'm not disagreeing with the usage of RDF syntax (in this msg),
just that usage of these elements in non-RDF tools require more
concrete content models than is currently given in the modules.  I
think that should be an open issue.

> [1] http://www.egroups.com/files/rss-dev/Modules/Proposed/mod_dc.html
> [2]
> http://www.egroups.com/files/rss-dev/Modules/Proposed/mod_taxonomy.html

  -- Ken