Microdata REC rationale statement discussion

Hi Manu,

Thank you for your replies to various points made in the rationale
statement I've helped to put together. I've replied to some of your
points below. I've also removed them from the rationale statement wiki
page: I think that page should capture the rationale for why Microdata
should be on the REC track, and discussing its points should happen
here, on public-html.

The rationale document states:
>> The W3C Process defines a REC track along which Working Groups
>> actively develop deliverables. If a Working Group chooses to *stop*
>> work on a deliverable, the Process requires the WG to produce a Note
>> "to indicate that work has ended on" the deliverable. (See ยง7.1 of
>> the World Wide Web Consortium Process Document of 14 October 2005.)
>> So the choice before the Working Group is to either continue work on
>> Microdata, or to stop work on it (publish it as a Note). If we choose
>> to continue work on it, it remains on the REC track because the REC
>> track is literally composed of those things that we are working on as
>> a Working Group.

You replied:
> This is one (fairly strange) interpretation of W3C Note.

I think the process document is pretty clear on this, but I'd be
interested to hear from Mike, our Team contact. Mike?

>> The Call for Consensus on whether or not to publish a Microdata CR
>> received support from browser vendors (e.g. Apple), large Web
>> properties (e.g. Yandex), and popular Web publishing platforms (e.g.
>> Drupal).
> 
> It also received a number of dissenting e-mails about the publication
> of the document.

Indeed, hence the question before the working group.

Later, you replied to some of the points Jason Ronallo had made:

>> The Microdata parser and API produces a JSON serialization which is
>> far simpler to work with than than triples or JSON-LD.
>
> The last time I spoke with him, Jason Ronallo did not say anything of
> this sort about JSON-LD.[1] Specifically, he said 'I've heard of
> JSON-LD but haven't looked at it closely enough to see if it passes my
> own simplicity test.'.

Apparently he familiarized himself with JSON-LD inbetween talking to you
and emailing me.

>> Microdata's @itemref attribute allows for structuring the visible
>> page for humans while also having it make sense for machines, in a
>> more straightforward manner than the corresponding RDFa Lite
>> feature(s).
>
> There is an much simpler @itemref replacement that we're currently
> working on for RDFa.[2]

I'm glad to hear it. Nevertheless, this is an area where a) Microdata
and RDFa Lite currently differ, and b) some people prefer the Microdata
approach.


Ted

1. https://plus.google.com/u/0/102122664946994504971/posts/Zoq5EiNR9pw
2. http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/meetings/2012-12-06#Discussion_about___40_itemref_and_Microdata_DOM_API

Received on Monday, 10 December 2012 18:12:30 UTC