Re: Should xlink:arcrole or xlink:role be the primary way todispatchon related resources? was Re: URIs, names and well known RDDL names,

["Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@home.com>]

Jonathan Borden writes, referring to my previous post on the useage for title,
role, and arcrole -

> Let me also answer Jason's question about why ever have xl:role=xl:arcrole:
>
> In some specific situations, the purpose and nature of a resource are the
> same, for example the main XML Schema: Its purpose is to be an "XML Schema"
> and it *is* an "XML Schema" so in this particular situation:
>
> xlink:title="XML Schema"
> xlink:arcrole="http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema
> xlink:role="http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema
>

May I respectfully suggest that the purpose "to be the main schema" is
distinct from the nature of the resource "is an xml schema"?  I don't think
this is splitting hairs at all, I think it is a true conceptual difference.
And after all, the main schema could be an xmlschema, a RELAX schema, a DTD, a
TREX schema, and so on, while still having the purpose of being a main schema.

If my processor sees an arcrole or title asserting "Main Schema", and then
finds by means of the "role" attribute that the resource is actually a RELAX
schema, it can then process using its RELAX capabilities or decline to process
if it can't do that.  In this view, there is ***always*** a difference between
the purpose and the thing.  It is only casual use of the English language that
makes it appear that sometimes they are the same.

I propose - or request - that this distinction be clearly incorporated into
the rddl rec, and that it be implemented with a set of URIs for "arcrole" that
are distinct from the URIs for "role".

> but below the purpose is an "Imported Schema", but the nature is "XML
> Schema"
>
> > For the two schema fragments:
> > title = 'Imported Schema'
> > arcrole='urn:rddl:linkrole:import-schema'
> > role='urn:rddl:resourcetype:xsd-schema'                      (or use the
> > schema namespace)
>
> xl:arcrole="http://www.rddl.org/arcrole#imported-schema
> xl:role="http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema
>
> (for us, we do specifically intend to place some documentation of these
> terms at the arcrole URI, so we'd actually prefer that its a URL :-)
>
I like the thought that you can get more info if you need to look at it.  As
long as de-referencing it stays optional.

Regards,

Tom P