Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
On May 14, 2009, at 1:30 PM, Shelley Powers wrote:
So, if I'm pushing for RDFa, it's not because I want to "win". It's
because I have things I want to do now, and I would like to make sure
have a reasonable chance of working a couple of years in the future.
And yeah, once SVG is in HTML5, and RDFa can work with HTML5, maybe I
wouldn't mind giving old HTML a try again. Lord knows I'd like to
user ampersands again.
It sounds like your argument comes down to this: you have personally
invested in RDFa, therefore having a competing technology is bad,
regardless of the technical merits. I don't mean to parody here - I am
somewhat sympathetic to this line of argument. Often pragmatic
concerns mean that an incremental improvement just isn't worth the
cost of switching (for example HTML vs. XHTML). My personally judgment
is that we're not past the point of no return on data embedding.
There's microformats, RDFa, and then dozens of other serializations of
RDF (some of which you cited). This doesn't seem like a space on the
verge of picking a single winner, and the players seem willing to
experiment with different options.
There are not dozens of other serializations of RDF.
The point I was trying to make is, I'd rather put my time into something
that exists now, than have to watch the wheel re-invented. I'd rather
see semantic metadata become a reality. I'm glad that you personally
feel that companies will be just peachy keen on having to support
multiple parsers to get the same data.
On the HTML WG side, I will never support microdata, because no case has
been made for its existence.
The point is, people in the real world have to use this stuff. It
helps them if they have one, generally agreed on approach. As it
is, folks have to contend with both RDFa and microformats, but at
least we know these have different purposes.
From my cursory study, I think microdata could subsume many of the
use cases of both microformats and RDFa. It seems to me that it
avoids much of what microformats advocates find objectionable, and
provides a good basis for new microformats; but at the same time it
seems it can represent a full RDF data model. Thus, I think we have
the potential to get one solution that works for everyone.
I'm not 100% sure microdata can really achieve this, but I think
making the attempt is a positive step.
It can't, don't you see?
Microdata will only work in HTML5/XHTML5. XHTML 1.1 and yes, 2.0 will
be around for years, decades. In addition, XHTML5 already supports RDFa.
Supporting XHTML 1.1 has about 0.00000000001% as much value as
supporting text/html. XHTML 2.0 is completely irrelevant to the Web,
and looks on track to remain so. So I don't find this point very
persuasive.
I don't think you'll find that the world is breathlessly waiting for
HTML5. I think you'll find that XHTML 1.1 will have wider use than HTML5
for the next decade. If not longer. I wouldn't count out XHTML 2.0,
either. And in a decade, a lot can change.
Why you think something completely brand new, no vendor support,
drummed up in a few hours or a day or so is more robust, and a better
option than a mature spec in wide use, well frankly boggles my mind.
I haven't evaluated it enough to know for sure (as I said). I do think
avoiding CURIEs is extremely valuable from the point of view of sane
text/html semantics and ease of authoring; and RDF experts seem to
think it works fine for representing RDF data models. So tentatively,
I don't see any gaping holes. If you see a technical problem, and not
just potential competition for the technology you've invested in, then
you should definitely cite it.
I don't think CURIEs are that difficult, nor impossible no matter the
arguments that Henri brings out.
I am impressed with your belief in HTML5.
But
One other detail that it seems not many people have picked up on yet
is that microdata proposes a DOM API to extract microdata-based info
from a live document on the client side. In my opinion this is huge
and has the potential to greatly increase author interest in
semantic markup.
Not really. Can do this now with RDFa in XHTML. And I don't need any
new DOM to do it.
The power of semantic markup isn't really seen until you take that
markup data _outside_ the document. And merge that data with data
from other documents. Google rich snippets. Yahoo searchmonkey. Heck,
even an application that manages the data from different subsites of
one domain.
I respectfully disagree. An API to do things client-side that doesn't
require an external library is extremely powerful, because it lets
content authors easily make use of the very same semantic markup that
they are vending for third parties, so they have more incentive to use
it and get it right.
Sure, we'll have to disagree on this one.
Now, it may be that microdata will ultimately fail, either because
it is outcompeted by RDFa, or because not enough people care about
semantic markup, or whatever. But at least for now, I don't see a
reason to strangle it in the cradle.
Outcompeted...wow, what a way to think of it. Sorry, but competition
has no place in spec work.
With due respect, you're the one who brought competition into this
discussion by saying there can only be one winner. I don't really
think that's true, in this case.
OK, fine.
Thanks for the discussion.
Shelley
