PROPOSAL: Errata text about XMLLiteral values and canonical XML

[Shane McCarron]

As per my action item from today's meeting, I propose the following text
for the RDFa Syntax Errata document:

Section 5.5, step 9 reads in part "The value of the [XML literal
<http://www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-syntax/#s_xml_literals>] is a string created
by serializing to text, all nodes that are descendants of the [current
element <http://www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-syntax/#T_current_element>], i.e.,
not including the element itself, and giving it a datatype of
|rdf:XMLLiteral|."  Unfortunately, the requirements for such a
serialized string are not completely clear when it comes to XML
Namespaces.  For the avoidance of doubt, in future versions of the RDFa
Syntax Recommendation, we expect to require that the value of the XML
literal be serialized Canonical XML as defined in [XMLC14N].  We advise
current implementations to start supporting this use model now, since
other participants in the XML tool chain expect consistent, canonical XML.

[XMLC14N]  http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-c14n

Comments?

--
Shane P. McCarron                          Phone: [phone] x120
Managing Director                            Fax: [phone]
ApTest Minnesota                            Inet: shane@...

[Philip Taylor-5]

Shane McCarron wrote:
> [...] For the avoidance of doubt, in future versions of the RDFa
> Syntax Recommendation, we expect to require that the value of the XML
> literal be serialized Canonical XML as defined in [XMLC14N].  We advise
> current implementations to start supporting this use model now, since
> other participants in the XML tool chain expect consistent, canonical XML.
>
> [XMLC14N]  http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-c14n

Why only "Canonical XML"?
http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-concepts/#dfn-rdf-XMLLiteral requires
*Exclusive* Canonical XML (specifically "encoding as UTF-8 [RFC 2279]
yields exclusive Canonical XML (with comments, with empty
InclusiveNamespaces PrefixList ) [XML-XC14N]"), referencing
http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-exc-c14n/

I expect this errata (and future versions of the RDFa Syntax
Recommendation) should therefore refer to xml-exc-c14n instead of
xml-c14n (unless the intent is a willful violation of rdf-concepts, or
unless rdf-concepts is changed before then).

--
Philip Taylor
pjt47@...