- From: Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com>
- Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2010 11:57:37 -0800
- To: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
- CC: Krzysztof Maczyński <1981km@gmail.com>, "public-html@w3.org" <public-html@w3.org>
Maciej: > Although Working Draft publications do not require consensus, I > encourage you to consider withdrawing this objection for the following > reasons ... ------ I don't withdraw my objections recorded in: http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/40318/issue-76-objection-poll/results which apply to this CfC. ----- > - The HTML WG charter specifically calls for us to include extension > mechanisms: "The HTML WG is encouraged to provide a mechanism to > permit independently developed vocabularies ... to be mixed into HTML > documents." Microdata is one way to mix in such vocabularies. But the actually charter which you only selectively quoted says: "The HTML WG is encouraged to provide a mechanism to permit independently developed vocabularies such as Internationalization Tag Set (ITS), Ruby, and RDFa to be mixed into HTML documents." Microdata does not provide a means of including Internationalized Tag Set, Ruby, OR RDFa, and so "Microdata is one way to mix in such vocabularies" is false, and your misquoting inappropriate. ----- > - There is precedent for this Working Group to publish a separate > Working Draft that adds an extension mechanism to HTML, namely HTML > +RDFa. No one objected to that publication as out of scope, either > before or after publication. I didn't formally object at the time, but I didn't think it was a good idea, and said so in my poll comments. "No one objected to that publication as out of scope" is false. In any case, the precedent cited should not continue to be followed. ---- > Working Draft publications do not have to have > consensus and do not even meet requirements. In the spirit of wider > review and openness to exploratory development, this Working Group has > previously approved Working Drafts that not all members agreed with on > a technical level. The Microdata material has already been available and discussed, and so does not qualify for "spirit of wider review and openness to exploratory development". In any case, we're too late in the process of the W3C HTML working group to publish, at this time, under this charter, new material that was not part of HTML4, and for which there is not a clear preponderance of opinion that the technology covered by the document is, or should be, part of HTML. Even if there were reasons in the past for allowing Working Draft publications that do not have consensus or meet requirements, this is not part of the current documented HTML Working Group Decision Policy and should not be. ----- Finally, I sent in privately a comment from a colleague and metadata expert, which I believe reads on the decision to publish Microdata in HTML WG. Although working group members may prefer to hear opinions first-hand, I think the formal W3C process allows representation of opinions by others (although this is not clear in the HTML Working Group Decision Policy.) For the record, what I sent was: --- Original Message --- From: Larry Masinter Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2009 10:38 PM To: Paul Cotton; Maciej Stachowiak; Sam Ruby ... Subject: Additional objection to "keep microdata" A colleague sent me a comment, but wasn't able to get into the HTML working group in time to make the 12/17 deadline for comments. I thought I would forward them anyway. The comment was in the context of reasons why neither Microdata nor RDFa may be "the answer" and should be split into separate drafts. Since you're collecting opinions, and these points don't seem to be made in any of the other postings, I thought I would forward these comments. ============================================== I think there are 2 aspects to this. The first is that I agree that unconstrained vocabulary extension is very important, and that use of namespaces is a good way to get this. I think the Microdata proponents are excessively blinded by fear, or maybe by concern for lowest end use cases (the talk about namespaces getting lost in copy-and-paste). Real web development needs tools, tools can check namespaces. Low-ish end use will quickly learn to keep the xmlns attributes close enough. Lowest end raw text editor use will screw up lots of things besides metadata namespaces. The second is that the distributed nature of both RDFa and Microdata introduce practical issues with metadata management. It will take more work to find and process all of the little bits of metadata. This is not a deal breaker, it is a practical matter of work. The bottom line might be viewed as a fundamental question of why an HTML designer wants RDFa instead of RDF - what is wrong with RDF, what advantages does RDFa have?
Received on Saturday, 9 January 2010 19:58:11 UTC