Ian Hickson wrote:
On Tue, 12 May 2009, Peter Mika wrote:
Just a quick comment on:
it uses prefixes, which most authors simply do not understand, and
which many implementors end up getting wrong (e.g. SearchMonkey
hard-coded certain prefixes in its first implementation, Google's
handling of RDF blocks for license declarations is all done with
Actually, the problem we see is not so much the prefixes themselves but rather
the cumbersome way of specifying namespace prefix definitions using xmlns. So
I think it would make sense to have some mechanism for referencing bundles of
namespace prefixes ('profiles') or namespace registries, in order to easy
authoring.
In terms of prefixes, I find that 'com.foaf-project.name' is a lot more
difficult to write than 'foaf:name'. Reverse domain names are
non-intuitive for non-programmer types (or non-Java programmers).
If we can come up with a way of using the string "foaf:name" without
having to declare "foaf" in each document, I'm totally in agreement. I've
considered maybe registering the "foaf" URL scheme, or using some other
punctuation character and having people register prefixes, but I don't
know what punctuation character to use (':' and '.' are both taken).
But then we would lose the extensibility, which is the power behind all
of this.
If I remember correctly, Henri had an issue with the DOM when it came to
support of namespaces in XHTML, and not in HTML, which was the reason
that @prefix or something along those lines proposed. There was quite
positive progress in this regard, too. I don't know what happened to
that progress.
But regardless, the majority of people will include metadata markup by
installing a plug-in or module, and making a couple of choices. And if
you put together a good ten-minute tutorial for the average developer,
they'll have no problem with "foaf:name". Training and clarity of
communication is much ore important than form, it always has been with
technology.
The examples you come up with just don't justify discarding
consideration of a capability that just started getting incorporated
into Google search. I would say if your fellow Google developers could
understand how this all works, there is hope for others.
Shelley
