On Sun, 17 Apr 2005, Lachlan Hunt wrote:
Imagine you use publicly available profiles A and B.
Two months later, the author of profile A updates his profile to include the definition "baz", meaning something completely different to the definition from profile B.
Well, I'd say the author of profile A has broken some rules by not keeping the URI for an old version persistent.
There is no way we are requiring a new URI every time the profile changes. That would be an administrative nightmare for editors, authors, and UA implementors. It would make working out common semantics nigh on impossible. IMHO, anyway.
The only way I can see to avoid this is to use only one profile, since then you can't ever get clashes.
There are other ways I've seen proposed, such as using namespaces:
http://www.protogenius.com/rel-schemas/draft-scheid-rel-schemas-00.htm
Namespaces are not an option. Authors simply don't understand them.
Respectfully, I think namespaces are the only sensible solution here and in other situations where the document is mixing semantics from multiple sources. What's the evidence that authors don't understand namespaces? Does it all come from XML namespaces (which are more complex than anything we would need for this type of problem*)? In any case I think this is a situation where, with sensible defaults, we can provide a useful feature that will be well within the grasp of the small subset of authors who actually want to use it.
* For example we could define <profile name="foo" href="http://example.com/profiles/#foo"; /> and then require a profile attribute for elements with rel values not assosiated with the default profile, which would be given by the value of the profile attribute in <head> or the last <profile> element with no <name> value. That seems much simpler than XML namespaces.
--
"Sir: "Offence" is not confined to the religious. I take offence at "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", "Jingle Bells" and all that they stand for; at ten-gallon hats and other symbols of American aggression; at slit-eyed black veils and other symbols of the oppression of women; at First Communion veils, and other symbols of the indoctrination of children. But I do not start a riot when I encounter them, nor try to get them banned by law. I mutter through gritted teeth and turn the other way.
There is a case to be made that all of us should try to avoid giving gratuitous offence to others. But how has our secular society been conned into allowing religious offence to jump the queue and claim special privileges?"
- Richard Dawkins (The Independent, 24th December 2004)
