DCAT alias

[dr-shorthair]

Alias
DCAT --> vocab-dcat-3

[dr-shorthair]

@tidoust this one should be safe

[tidoust]

Tests do pass but note that's the same issue as in #834 that just gets postponed to a future date.

The vocab-dcat-3 spec creates entries such as vocab-dcat-3-20201217. If DCAT is made an alias to vocab-dcat-3, then that means entries such as DCAT-20201217 get created. If, later on, a level 4 gets worked on and you want to update DCAT to target vocab-dcat-4 instead of vocab-dcat-3, that won't work because DCAT-20201217 would then no longer exist. Again ,the right fix would be to have support for specification series (raised in #811) and the general guideline is "use references with levels" in the meantime.

I'm not trying to block this. Other entries got created using that model before, including some I fear I contributed. But that does not fit nicely with the way Specref models things for now.

[dr-shorthair]

So are you saying that there is currently no way to refer to version-free DCAT using specref.
And no way to fix that.

I'm editing the new edition of the W3C SSN Ontology and we wish to draw attention to the parallel between ObservationCollection and dcat:Dataset. That DCAT class is in all editions of DCAT, so the reference should reflect that.

[vocab-dcat] links to a version that is clearly marked 'obsolete' so I don't want to use that.
I guess I'll have to add a local entry in the config.js instead. That seems unsatisfactory.

[tidoust]

So are you saying that there is currently no way to refer to version-free DCAT using specref.

That's correct. For example, there's no way to reference css-color. You have to choose between css-color-3, css-color-4, css-color-5, or css-color-6: https://www.specref.org/?q=css-color

And no way to fix that.

No good way. There's always a way to force entries into Specref. If DCAT is made an alias of vocab-dcat-3 then, when time comes to update the link to vocab-dcat-4, it is possible to force the creation of previous version entries in Specref, meaning to define entries such as:

"DCAT-20201217": {
  "aliasOf": "vocab-dcat-3-20201217"
}

This will have to be done for all dated versions of vocab-dcat-3. That's the current workaround and there are entries done like this in the w3c.json file.

I guess I'll have to add a local entry in the config.js instead. That seems unsatisfactory.

That seems like a good solution to solve your immediate problem. I suspect I'll look into adding support for specification series to Specref in a not too distant future because I need it as well. But that depends on other pending updates.