OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC

how do we deal with metadata vocabularies?

  • 1.  how do we deal with metadata vocabularies?

    Posted 07-24-2007 12:28
    A few weeks ago I asked the question here what we should do about the 
    existing bibliographic support in ODF 1.2 (text:bibliography-mark and 
    such) in favor of the new metadata field and system.
    
    Patrick suggested deprecating it in the future, with a note in 1.2 that 
    this will happen.
    
    The question is *how* to do this?
    
    Traditionally, any new XML added to ODF has a fairly high-bar for 
    inclusion. It needs to be fully-specified, and preference is given to 
    existing standards; e.g. specs or portions of specs that go through some 
    formal standards process.
    
    But the new metadata system I think presents us some challenges, and 
    that is: how do we think about suggesting -- either normatively or 
    informatively -- what vocabularies should be used for particular use cases?
    
    So here's the thing: we have a standard model in RDF. That is 
    standardized. That model gives us reliable extension and flexibility. 
    Developers can add anything they want to the RDF, and so long as its 
    compliant, it can be read and displayed.
    
    It is, I think, precisely the robust distributed flexibility of RDF that 
    means vocabularies are rarely formally standardized in the same way that 
    an XML language is. This is a feature, not a bug.
    
    Surely for particular kinds of processing (like bibliographies and 
    citations) one has to have some expectations about the modeling, and so 
    we need to provide this. The question is how?
    
    I think it's clear we should provide the specification for the citation 
    field in ODF 1.2.
    
    I think it's also the case that we should not ourselves define the 
    vocabulary for the bibliographic source data. I am working on that in an 
    independent project that involves developers from different projects.