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This document describes CC/PP (Composite Capabilities/Preference Profiles) structure and vocabularies. A CC/PP profile is a description of device capabilities and user preferences that can be used to guide the adaptation of content presented to that device. Here profile does not refer to a subset of a particular specification, for example the CSS Mobile profile, but refers to the document(s) exchanged between devices that describe the capabilities of a device.
As the number and variety of devices connected to the Internet grows, there is a corresponding increase in the need to deliver content that is tailored to the capabilities of different devices. Some limited techniques, such as HTTP "accept" headers and HTML "alt=" attributes, already exist. As part of a framework for content adaptation and contextualization, a general purpose profile format is required that can describe the capabilities of a user agent and preferences of its user. CC/PP is designed to be such a format.
CC/PP is based on RDF, the Resource Description Framework, which was designed by the W3C as a general purpose metadata description language. RDF provides the framework with the basic tools for both vocabulary extensibility, via XML namespaces [XMLNAMESPACES], and interoperability. There is a specification that describes how to encode RDF using XML [RDF], and another that defines an RDF schema description language using RDF [RDFSCHEMA]. RDF was designed to describe the metadata or machine understandable properties of the Web. RDF is a natural choice for the CC/PP framework since user agent profiles are metadata intended primarily for communication between user agents and resource data providers. For an introduction to RDF, see [RDFPRIMER]. Note that the [RDFPRIMER] document describes a more recent revision of the RDF specifications than the ones on which this specification is based.
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