Re: microdata use cases and Getting data out of poorly written Web pages

Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> Hey Ben,
> 
> I seem to recall you said before that RDFa was designed without 
> considering the requirements of text/html, and that it should not be 
> seen as constraining the text/html syntax. You also described most of 
> the deployments of RDFa in text/html you cite below as "experimental", 
> and said they should not be considered to make the text/html syntax a 
> done deal.
> 
> Given this, I do not give great weight to your objection. You can't have 
> it both ways.

There is the (considerably smaller) issue of what markup should be valid 
in XHTML5.

It also appears that Ben's objection could be addressed by simply 
picking a name other than 'property' for that particular attribute.  To 
date, HTML5 development has given consideration not only to specs as 
written, but also to tooling as deployed.  I'd go further and say that 
HTML5 has gone to great lengths to NOT break even small percentages of 
the web as it is practiced today, independent of whether or not such 
practices are well advised or ill advised.

All other features in HTML5 have varying degrees of implementation and 
deployment experience.  At the moment, Ian's proposal appears to be 
speculative - as in "seems like it would work".  I would hope to see a 
similar level of deployment effort for this proposal before we make a 
final determination as to whether or not it makes the cut for Last Call.

> Regads,
> Maciej

- Sam Ruby

> On May 10, 2009, at 4:38 PM, Ben Adida wrote:
> 
>>
>> Sam Ruby wrote:
>>> It appears that Ian is on the cusp of making a proposal.  It may turn 
>>> out to be something that people can live with, and if so, I'll be 
>>> glad to declare consensus
>>
>> The proposal is up, and, as Creative Commons rep, I cannot live with 
>> it (it's not even close, frankly.)
>>
>> First, this gratuitously ignores much existing spec work and much 
>> existing deployment (Yahoo, CC, MySpace, Slideshare, the UK 
>> government, the US government, etc.) with a number of use cases that 
>> are simply not taken into account (Manu has discussed these at length 
>> on the WHATWG list). When another spec solves the problem and has been 
>> deployed by significant players, the first step is to consider how 
>> that spec can be integrated to the fullest extent.
>>
>> So, I cannot live with something that throws away existing important 
>> implementations of the *exact* same use cases for no valid technical 
>> reason. The cost to existing implementors is far too high.
>>
>> In addition, this proposal *specifically* conflicts with RDFa by 
>> reusing RDFa attributes (i.e. @property) with a different 
>> interpretation. In other words, of all possible approaches to the 
>> problem, the HTML5 group chose an approach that specifically conflicts 
>> with the only other existing W3C spec for the given use cases. I think 
>> this may be a W3C first.
>>
>> I absolutely cannot live with that.
>>
>> I note, as a side point, that it's fairly clear this conflict was by 
>> design (since it was said that @property is "borrowed from RDFa"). In 
>> other words, whereas typical W3C groups go out of their way to prevent 
>> conflict with other specs, this group is currently actively creating 
>> conflict.
>>
>> -Ben
>>
> 
> 

Received on Monday, 11 May 2009 08:34:48 UTC