37579 - RDF content sink only picks up 'about' not 'rdf:about'

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core Graveyard :: RDF, defect, P3)

Description

[edd]

If the 'about' attribute on an RDF description is rdf:about then the template
doesn't pick up the URI. I'm attaching a test case.

This is important because if a typed node is used rather than an rdf:Description
in the RDF file, then you need to say 'rdf:about' explicitly. Currently, this
won't work.

Comment 1

[edd]

Attachment: XUL file to reproduce error

Comment 2

[edd]

Attachment: RDF file to reproduce error

Comment 3

[Chris Waterson]

Check the RDF spec. In RDF/XML, the 'about' attribute is not supposed to be in a 
namespace.

Comment 4

[edd]

This seems to be an open question (see Dan Connolly's post
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2000AprJun/0019.html)

In particular, examples in the RDF Schema spec (for a good example see
http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/CR-rdf-schema-20000327/#xmlcore) seem to reinforce
that where a typed node is being used then ID, about, resource etc. should all
be qualified with the RDF namespace prefix.

The test case I posted wasn't very good in demonstrating this, though, I'll
grant you. Where it was actually falling down for me was on an RDF file that
looked like this:

<rdf:RDF ....>
<f:FOO rdf:about="urn:foo:bar">
  ...
</f:FOO>
</rdf:RDF>

I'll post this to the NG to see if anyone can shed any more light on this.

Comment 5

[Chris Waterson]

In the spirit of "being liberal towards one's input", I'd be willing to fix 
this; however, it does lead us down the slippery slope.

It seems that the original authors of the RDF/XML syntax specifcation ran fast 
and loose with XML namespaces, and were under the influence of Connoly's "Myth 
#4". (They were also under the influence of the myth that a qualified name could 
be represented as the concatenation of the namespace's URI prefix and the name, 
rather than treating it as a tuple. But I digress...)

Comment 6

[Chris Waterson]

We should fix this.

Comment 7

[Chris Waterson]

nominating as nsbeta2: this is a standards issue.

Comment 8

[Jay Patel [:jay]]

Putting on [NEED INFO] radar. PDT needs to know impact to user and risk of fix 
to make a call on this bug. 

Comment 9

[Chris Waterson]

I cannot quantify the "impact to user" of standards support. This will affect 
parsing of RDF/XML files.

Comment 10

[Jay Patel [:jay]]

Eric, can you please comment on the standards issue here?

Comment 11

[Jay Patel [:jay]]

Putting on [nsbeta2-] radar. Not critical to beta2. 

Comment 12

[Chris Waterson]

fix checked in a while ago.

Comment 13

[Tom Everingham]

verified

Comment 14

[Jonathan Steele]

why RDF woudln't show on XSLT? Does Anbybody help me to fix this problem?