Hello all,
John Kunze and I have been having an off-list chat arising from his latest
(excellent) guide to embedding DC metadata in HTML [1].
The issue that has been taxing our brains is that of the case used in
element names, and a conflict between our approach in HTML and that emerging
for an alternative solution via XML/RDF.
We'd welcome the thoughts of this group on how best to proceed.
As you all know, HTML doesn't particularly care about case, such that
'creator', 'CREATOR', 'Creator', and 'cREATOR' might very well be
indistinguishable. Nevertheless, we tend to employ the convention that DC
element names be expressed with an initial capital letter, followed by lower
case letters; 'Creator', and there's a lot of metadata out there in this
form. John's document [1] continues this tradition.
XML, on the other hand, is far more choosy about this stuff, and is case
sensitive; 'creator', 'CREATOR', 'Creator' and 'cREATOR' are four different
strings. Common practice in the wider XML/RDF world is to name things like
our Dublin Core elements in lower case only; 'creator'. The initial capital
letter ('Creator') is generally reserved for class-type structures. The
recent document from the Data Model group [2] respects this approach,
presenting element names in lower case.
And that's the "problem"; we have two shiny new documents, both talking
about *doing* Dublin Core, one of which recommends a 'Creator' style, and
the other of which recommends the 'creator' style.
To some extent, it doesn't really matter that they're different, especially
if we assume that the audiences are so discrete that no one will ever
actually read both documents that closely. We might also assume that tools
won't cross-search both XML/RDF and HTML-embedded Dublin Core.
However, we possibly *are* creating a migration problem for people who
follow the guidance in [1] and then try to migrate to XML/RDF at some point
in the future.
As we saw it, there are a number of things that might be done, none of which
is perfect for various reasons. These are;
(i) - change the recommendation in [2], such that XML/RDF
implementations label elements with a leading capital letter.
The obvious problem here is that this approach is directly at odds with
emerging practice in the wider XML/RDF community.
(ii) - change the recommendation in [1] - and retrospectively convert the
existing installed base of HTML - so that elements are labelled solely
in lower case.
It's unlikely that all those implementors out there would be happy to go
back and change all their existing metadata.
(iii) - recognise that case doesn't matter in HTML, so leave the existing
installed base alone. Change the recommendation in [1] so that new
implementors use lower case element names.
(iv) - recognise that the HTML installed base uses a leading capital
letter.
Recognise that XML/RDF uses all lower case letters. To allow
conversion between the two, declare the Dublin Core element names
to be case-insensitive, and leave it to HTML/XML tools to sort it out
according to whether the element is being used in XML or HTML.
(v) - Do nothing.
What do you all think? (I *know* which one I prefer, but then I'm biased)
Paul
[1] - http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/dc-general/1999-05/0063.html
[2] - http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/resources/dc/datamodel/WD-dc-rdf/
-- dr. paul miller - interoperability focus - [log in to unmask] --
u. k. office for library and information networking (ukoln)
tel: +44 (0)1482 466890 mobile: +44 (0)410 481812
---------------------------- http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/ --
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