Stuart,
I have redirected your comment to our issue tracking system so you will receive a formal response from the working group. The XHTML 2 Working Group just had a face to face meeting last week, so will not meet to consider your comment for three weeks. My immediate (informal) response is that CURIEs are currently used in mostly new contexts. If a CURIE is to be used in a context where a value could also be a URI, a "safe_curie" production is also defined (the CURIE is enclosed in brackets). See the RDFa Syntax document (http://www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-syntax) for examples of this, in particular on the definitions of @resource and @about. It is not our intent that a CURIE be used in a context where a URIReference is currently used (e.g., @href) unless we explicitly break backward compatibility. Specifically, as an example, we do not intend to introduce an updated XHTML M12N 1-compatible module where @href takes a URIorCURIE, since markup languages based upon M12N 1 are more or less compatible with existing user agents and changing the processing requirements of well-known attributes would not be a service to our constituents.
Note that CURIEs are intended to be a superset of QNames, and therefore are suitable for use anywhere a QName is used as an attribute value today. We know that in the past the TAG and others have expressed concern about the (mis)use of QNames in attribute values. We agree that such a use of QNames can be problematic, and hope that by instead using CURIEs in these contexts we can avoid QNames' attendant problems.
Williams, Stuart (HP Labs, Bristol) wrote:
Dear XHTML Editors, Please can you clarify your intentions with respect to the use of CURIE's. In particular the TAG would like to understand whether the intention is that CURIE's be useable in existing elements/attribute where URIReferences are places are already in use, or only in new(?) elements and attributes where use of CURIEs is specifically called out. The TAG is particularly concerned about how existing processors are expected to behave in the presense of markup containing CURIEs if they are to be used in places where existing processors URIReferences. Many thanks, Stuart Williams on behalf of W3C TAG -- Hewlett-Packard Limited registered Office: Cain Road, Bracknell, Berks RG12 1HN Registered No: 690597 England
-- Shane P. McCarron Phone: +1 763 786-8160 x120 Managing Director Fax: +1 763 786-8180 ApTest Minnesota Inet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
