Re: RDFa Last Call Comment: Better name than 'instanceof' is needed

Micah Dubinko wrote:
> 
> If the instanceof attribute were completely removed from RDFa, would any 
> use cases be forclosed?

Yes, the original use case for chaining: e.g. adding an author to a 
paper without having to manually give it a blank node name or repeating 
a predicate.

There are generally a number of cases where the markup is much more 
pleasant and readable with @instanceof.

> In discussions about RDFa with non-RDF-familiar people, instanceof has 
> been harder for them to grasp.

That's interesting, although surprising and different from what I've 
seen, where folks want to "add a type" quickly, e.g. a calendar event, a 
business card, etc...

   <div instanceof="cal:Vevent">
      <span property="cal:dtstart"> ... </span>
      ...
   </div>

If you had to give the event some random identifier, I believe that 
would be worse and error-prone.

-Ben

Received on Tuesday, 18 March 2008 04:23:37 UTC