Re: FYI: another usage proposal for RDFa

HI Ben,

On 18/01/2008, Ben Adida <ben@adida.net> wrote:
> Mark Birbeck wrote:
> >   RDFa also has the advantage of being a standardized microformat, which
> >   makes it simpler for a developer to maintain and understand a page created
> >   by someone else.
>
> Yes! This is the same principle that makes copy-and-paste possible.

Definitely...although what struck me in the article was actually the
formulation in relation to GRDDL, rather than RDFa, i.e., the notion
that the meaning of some mark-up is the result of applying a function
that you don't actually know without going to look for it.

Or rather, whilst the meaning in RDFa is given by:

  f(d)

where 'd' is the input document, in GRDDL it's given by:

  f(d, r)

where 'r' is a set of rules to apply to the input document. And as you
rightly say, this means that whilst with f(d) you can do cut-and-paste
from anyone's document, with f(d, r) you can only do cut-and-paste
from a document that uses the same rules as your document.

Or I suppose you could put that last point slightly differently, and
say that to ensure that you get all the data that has been
cut-and-pasted, you must add the appropriate rules for each data type
that you copied:

  f(d, r1)
  f(d, r2)
  .
  .
  .
  f(d, rn)

All of which is completely irrelevant to the task in hand of
completing the RDFa syntax document. ;) But interesting nonetheless.

Regards,

Mark

-- 
  Mark Birbeck, formsPlayer

  mark.birbeck@formsPlayer.com | +44 (0) 20 7689 9232
  http://www.formsPlayer.com | http://internet-apps.blogspot.com

  standards. innovation.

Received on Friday, 18 January 2008 19:38:05 UTC