32208 - RDF spec violation: "about" attribute on RDF containers

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core Graveyard :: RDF, defect, P3)

Description

[edd]

Mozilla makes a lot of use of putting the "about" attribute on RDF containers
such as RDF:Seq etc. For instance see panels.rdf in the mozProfile directory:
<RDF:Seq about="urn:sidebar:current-panel-list">.

Unfortunately this is not allowed in RDF. Containers can only have the ID
attribute. So really it ought to be:

<RDF:Seq ID="current-panel-list">

and the 'ref' to this would be "panels.rdf#current-panel-list" rather than using
the URN.

At the moment a lot of RDF in Mozilla is not valid according to the RDF Syntax
Recommendation.

Comment 1

[Chris Waterson]

I know. Unfortunately, we need to be able to do this. Fixing bug 24546 
"fully" (e.g., adding extended template syntax) would mitigate the need, but I 
doubt we'd retrofit things.

Comment 2

[Dan Brickley]

As a coping mechanism for not having resources to fix this, it might be worth
making explicit that this variant on RDF syntax is only used within the Browser
itself, ie. not proposed for Web channel formats, embedded metadata in HTML
content etc etc., and (documented from somewhere) that this is a bug.

A second approach would be to fix (maybe it does this already) 
the RDF parser to accept an RDF Description element with an rdf:type property
pointing to RDF:Bag, ie. avoid the special convenience syntax that RDF provides.
This would mean that rdf:li would need replacing with rdf:_1 explicit numbering
since the rdf:li convience construct would also not be allowed.

 

Comment 3

[Aaron Swartz]

This is no longer an issue as it is made legal by:

http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-grammar/

specifically:

http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-rdf-syntax-grammar-20010906/

Comment 4

[benc]

tever is not RDF QA anymore