On Aug 28, 2008, at 15:00, Russell Leggett wrote:
I actually think that using custom microformat-like conventions with classes or tags is really not as robust a solution as what is being attempted with RDFa (I honestly did not know much about RDFa before this conversation). However, while people keep suggesting classes, I have yet to hear anyone suggest the data- attributes. Maybe it was said or implied elsewhere, but it seems like a good fit here. Instead of requiring the addition of "about" or "property" attributes, just use "data-about" or "data-property". It may not be ideal, but it fits with the existing spec.
As Anne and Julian have pointed out, that's not a use of data-* attributes permitted by the spec.
Beyond that, you have the issue of CURIEs. I can see how they make a good fit, but it really is just piggybacking on something else convenient. It's an abuse of namespace syntax. That works fine for XHTML, but there is no way you are getting namespaces put into HTML, so figure out another way. Why not something like "data-curie="dc:http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/ "?
That would be an abuse of data-* attributes as well. The data-* attributes are for scripts included by the page itself. The data-* attributes aren't for communication with other parties.
Having something-other-than-data-curie="dc:http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/ " or somesuch would work around the layering problem of that qnames-in- content have (and CURIEs have, too, when using the namespace mapping context). It leaves the problem that making URLs shorter (in the amortized sense) by introducing a supposedly insignificant prefix confuses people and makes stuff brittle under copying and pasting.
Why not property="http://the.entire.full/uri/here/if/you/really/want/uris/as#identifiers "?
-- Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
