[uf-dev] Proper use of value

Tue Apr 22 13:38:47 PDT 2008

Manu Sporny wrote:
> Just my 0ドル.02 on this - we had a very involved discussion (lasting
> several months) when tackling this problem at the W3C with regards to
> how to do whitespace canonicalization in RDFa. In the end, we stated
> that the parser should keep the original text as is (including all
> whitespace), and it's up to the application to normalize spaces in 
> a way
> that makes sense to the application.

Unfortunately for some microformats, the parser *needs* to know about 
white space. The example which springs to mind is N-optimisation in 
hCard. This:
	<span class="fn">JohnDoe</span>
is parsed as:
	FN:JohnDoe
	NICKNAME:JohnDoe
Whereas this:
	<span class="fn">John Doe</span>
is parsed as:
	FN:John Doe
	N:Doe;John
In RDF terms, the white space in the object literal effects the 
choice of predicate. So it is important to know how white space 
should be interpreted, at least in some situations.
-- 
Toby A Inkster
<mailto:mail at tobyinkster.co.uk>
<http://tobyinkster.co.uk>