Eric van der Vlist <vdv@...> writes:

> What is sure is that:
>
> 1) per RDF semantic, rdf:about is used as an identifier for the channel.
> 2) per RSS 0.9x usage, the link element is a URL (or URI) pointing on an
> existing page which can be visualized for a human being.
>
> Therefor, I don't think these 2 values should be equals since they are
> not referring to the same resources or objects (a channel in one case, a
> page in the other one) and this would be confusing if we wanted to
> describe the page itself in the same rdf database.
>
> IMHO, a good practice would be to use a URL where the RSS feed can
> usually be found as rdf:about.
>
> There are exceptions, though and I don't think we should make a firm
> rule about this, but only a "best practice" advise.
>
> These exceptions are, for instance, sites building dynamics RSS feeds
> depending on sessions variables for which you can't provide a URI which
> will return the same feed (but will still have to assign an identifier
> to the channel).

To summarize what I think I've heard said, and put that in to terms I
think most important for RSS 1.0, then:

* the explicit connection between <link> and rdf:about should be
undone, so that at some time in the future they can be used
seperately.

* the only hard requirement, at this time, for rdf:about is that it
be unique, globally (for items, channels, and might as well be for
images and textinputs)

* <link>, therefore, need not be unique (as some existing uses have
shown)

* recommended current practice is to copy <link> (<url>) to rdf:about
iff it is unique, and otherwise to create a unique URI for
rdf:about.

* any more specific definition of rdf:about, at this time, is
unspecified

I believe I've also read that some think channel rdf:about should
point to the RSS file, and I'd like to give a counter-argument for
that: I would like to see the channel rdf:about to uniquely identify
the *channel*, where there might be several versions of RSS, other
site summary, topic maps, etc. that may also describe that channel.
As such, there may (to be determined later) be statements that could
be made about a channel that provide links to these other resources.

"Uniquely identify the channel" (rdf:about) can mean the site URL if
there's effectively only one channel to the site, a channel URL/URI if
there's multiple channels to the site, or a virtual or query URI if
this is a manufactured channel.

Am I close?

-- Ken