Re: Resource Directory Description Language (RDDL)

[Jonathan Borden <jborden@mediaone.net>]

Uche Ogbuji wrote:

> ... considering that Sean Palmer's XHTML m12n
> admonishments seem to have been put to good use.  I'm surprised not to see
him
> mentioned at http://www.openhealth.org/RDDL

Let me address this first and as clearly as possible: There is absolutely no
intention to deny credit to all involved. My most sincere apologies. The
sole reason for any lack of explicit credits is due to the rapid pace of
this activity over the last several days and the fact that the latest draft
has been flying back and forth. Several people (including yourself and Sean)
have made substantial comments, suggestions and admonishments, and if you
read the latest draft hopefully you will agree that the majority have been
incorporated into the specification. The explicit intention is for RDDL to
be an XML-DEV activity, developed my participants on the XML-DEV list. There
remains work to do, and hopefully the credits list will grow even larger as
this work gets closer to completion.

Both Edd Dumbill and Robin Cover have already written articles on the
initial development of this activity and it is my hope that we may reference
or perhaps directly use these in a "History and Credits" document ala SAX's.

[ 
http://www.xmlhack.com/read.php?item=974
http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/sgmlnew.html 
]



> > 
> > The Resource Directory Description Language is an extension of XHTML Basic
> > 1.0 with a new element named resource. This element serves as an XLink to
> > the referenced resource.
> 
> OK.  Just one more plea and I'll give.  Could we just drop the "language" 
> here?  "Resource Directory Description".  Full stop.

RDDL is pronouncable. RDD gives my brain a stutter.  Also the full name does accurately describe what the specification does.

> 
> But for more important matters, to the draft.
> 
> 'The resource element is in a namespace whose name is 
> http://www.openhealth.org/RDDL/. In this discussion, we assume the use of the 
> namespace prefix rddl for this name, and refer to this ele
ment as
> rddl:resource.'
>
> No offense to anyone, but I do think the "http://www.openhealth.org/RDDL/"
> namespace is a very odd one.  I still would like to see http://xml.org/...
> The idea is to avoid politics completely.  Even though I've been brought
to
> understand that "xml.org" itself has acquired some political slant of its
own,

http://xml.org is a fine name!

The main point about this activity is the intention that when a namespace
URI is dereferenced a document is returned which describes the namespace to
both humans and machines. Since we don't have write access to
http://xml.org, we can't create a http://xml.org/RDDL/ directory. The
namespace authority can change from http://www.openhealth.org (that's why we
have editors) once a more suitable location is found. I suggest that while
we develop the specification it remain parked in this temporary place.


> I would tend to think that this is a limited effect, and that most people
> would associate such a domain with neutral, open, and more
community-oriented
> XML standards.
>
> Also, since this is in the spirit of community-driven standards, I think
that
>
> http://www.openhealth.org/RDDL/arcrole.htm
>
> Should include Schematron and RELAX as examples, using the namespace URI
> defined in the relevant specs.

Absolutely! The current names in arcrole.htm are there as examples only. The
explicit intention is to use this as a directory of well known resource
types.

-Jonathan