Re: [office-metadata] RDF/XML and XPath

[Michael Brauer - Sun Germany - ham02 - Hamburg <Michael.Brauer@Sun.COM>]

Gary,

you are right, XForms is already part of the ODF specification.

Whether it should be part of the meta data proposal in my opinion
is an open question, and depends on whether we need a strong binding 
between RDF/XML data and the content.xml. With "strong binding" I mean a 
binding that is more explicit than the one we get implicitly by 
constructing the RDF graph, and that we may need to be able to actually 
implement metadata plug-ins.

If we don't need that strong binding, then we probably don't need 
XForms. If we need a strong binding, then I think we should at least 
consider to reuse XForms, instead of defining a new binding mechanism. 
Whether we take it then, is a different question, but in case we don't 
take it and define something ourselves, we should at least know very 
well why we do so.

Independent of that question, we are adding new XML instances (the 
RDF-XML stream) to the package, and we have a technology whose purpose 
is to create bindings to such instances. So we should add least add a 
few words to the specification how these instances can be used with 
XForms, and if is only that we say they can be used only if the physical 
representation of the RDF-XML instances remains unchanged.

Best regards

Michael

Gary Edwards wrote:
> Very nice Bruce! 
> 
> Since XForms is already part of the ODF specification, i don't see the 
> need to make it part of the metadata proposal other than to perhaps 
> identify some alternative use cases where an XForms binding might be 
> interesting, maybe even useful. 
> 
> ~ge~
> 
> On 2/9/07, *Bruce D'Arcus* <bruce.darcus@opendocument.us 
> <mailto:bruce.darcus@opendocument.us>> wrote:
> 
> 
>     On Feb 9, 2007, at 3:47 PM, Michael Brauer wrote:
> 
>      >> If that's the case, I don't see how it's our concern? I don't really
>      >> see what we would put in the ODF spec that would pertain to this,
>      >> except constraints on the syntax.
>      >
>      > The use case is that you have for instance a vCard instance in your
>      > document, and you want to display some of its RDF objects (name,
>      > street, etc.) in you letter.
> 
>     OK, this is a good use case.
> 
>     But it seems to me this does not change anything I said previously.
>     Using XPath still won't work with an in memory model, and I still don't
>     think it makes much sense to require two different mechanisms to
>     display metadata in the content.
> 
>     More importantly, perhaps the problem here is a quite specific one that
>     is in fact not about RDF/XML syntax per se, but rather specific
>     modeling. The issue, it seems to me, is blank nodes.
> 
>     Let me explain:
> 
>     The only reason you are looking to use XPath for the binding is to be
>     able to access anonymous nodes in content. If all resources have URIs,
>     there's no problem to do this simply with the metadata field approach
>     in ways well-suited to both XML and RDF tools, and without having to
>     use XPath.
> 
>     So maybe the solution is to not allow blank nodes for those (rare, I
>     suspect) encodings that must be able to be displayed in this very
>     fine-grained way inline?
> 
>     So if you want a user to be able to access vCard triples in a
>     fine-grained way in content like this, then you end up with:
> 
>     <rdf:Description rdf:about=" http://ex.net/1";>
>        <vcard:fn>Jane Doe</vcard:fn>
>        <vcard:n rdf:resource="http://ex.net/2"/>
>     </rdf:Description>
> 
>     <rdf:Description rdf:about=" http://ex.net/2";>
>        <vcard:given-name>Jane</vcard:given-name>
>        <vcard:family-name>Doe</vcard:family-name>
>     </rdf:Description>
> 
>     You can now access the family name directly in content without using
>     XPath.
> 
>     Problem solved, yes?
> 
>     Bruce
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Gary Edwards
> The OpenDocument Foundation, Inc.
> Redwood City, CA USA 94063
> (650) 365-0899
> (650) 888-2268 c.
> gary.edwards@OpenDocument.us <mailto:gary.edwards@OpenDocument.us>
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> 
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> 
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-- 
Michael Brauer, Technical Architect Software Engineering
StarOffice/OpenOffice.org
Sun Microsystems GmbH             Nagelsweg 55
D-20097 Hamburg, Germany          michael.brauer@sun.com
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