As some of you will know, the XHTML2 draft [1] introduces a 
very interesting syntax for RDF, which many would consider to 
be an improvement on the traditional RDF/XML syntax.  No doubt, 
many content authors will be seeking to add DC metadata to 
their XHTML2 content using these new mechanisms.

The News Architecture Working Party of the International Press 
Telecommunications Council (IPTC) is investigating the use of 
XHTML2 for expressing DC and other metadata.  A major problem 
for us is the lack of support in the current XHTML2 draft (as 
in RDF/XML) for the use of QNames to express terms in 
controlled vocabularies (aka values of properties).

At the moment, the XHTML2 @content attribute takes PCDATA and 
the @href attribute takes IRIs.  There is no attribute 
available for QNames.

We want to be able to use, eg, <dc:subject> with a QName as a 
value (ie the object of the RDF statement).  The reasons include 
legibility and compactness.  News items (and news headlines) 
often carry numerous subject codes, hence the need for 
compactness.

Is anyone else in the DC community looking at the use of DC in 
XHTML2 and thinking along similar lines to us?  We would be 
very happy to work with others on this issue.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2 

Misha Wolf
Standards Manager, Reuters
Chair, News Metadata Framework WG, IPTC
Vice-Chair, News Architecture WP, IPTC




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