Use Case: elaborate extensions to the @context want to refer to that remotely (by URI) rather than inline

[marc-portier]

This came up in the ro-profile discussion
see minutes of 2021-05-13 -- ro-profile-discussion

As a scientist in some data-management procedure adapting an elaborate (extending) profile, I want to be able to have slim and readable ro-create-metadata.json files that do not have to repeat all @context extensions inline.

We already have and suggest ways to extend the @context by having it be an array of

@context: [ 
  "https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.1/context", 
  {... additional inline mappings here ... } 
] 

The suggestion here is that we could as easily have that extended to

@context: [ 
  "https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.1/context", 
  "https://example.com/my-ro-profile/1.0/context", 
  ... other contexts form other profiles, ..., 
  {... additional inline mappings here ... }
]

Note: this adds additional preservation challenges - e.g. ensuring the JSON-LD context does not change beneat our feet, use semantic versioning etc. Since we do use @context URIs ourselves this boils down to ensuring profile editors are as diligent about sustained semantics as we promise to be.

[stain]

Would be fixed by #233 suggesting the Profile Crate can also be used as a JSON-LD context (and to define the terms there)

Now if profiles are nested you still have to either repeat them in each profile crate, or nest the @context -- I would prefer the first as the second is more fragile.