Re: RDFa and Microformats

Hi Toby,

> The problem with this syntax, which Mark has already pointed out, is that
> you have nothing to "scope" the two property attributes. An RDFa parser will
> see the "dtstart" and "dtend" properties as being scoped to the whole page,
> and not to the event.

Right...but the problem is no better when you come to @content on its own.

You say (in agreement with Martin's use of @content in Microformats):

> The content attribute solves the accessibility
> issue with ISO datetimes, and the use of it doesn't conflict at all with
> RDFa's parsing rules.

The problem is as follows:

@content is used in RDFa to explicitly override the inline mark-up
when used with @property:

  <span property="foaf:name" content="Toby A Inkster">Toby</span>

If the inline mark-up says everything that you want it to, then you
don't need @content:

  <span property="foaf:name">Toby A Inkster</span>

However, if you now add a @content value that is tied to some other
property -- in Martin's example, @class -- then we have a similiar
situation to our previous one; how does the RDFa parser know that
@content is being used in a Microformatty-way, and not an RDFa-way:

  <span
    class="dtstart" content="008-06-28T21:00:00"
    property="foaf:name"
  >Toby A Inkster</span>

Your name is now a date, in the RDFa parser.

I would like to stress again that this is no surprise. If an attribute
existed in XHTML that we could use in RDFa without changing its
semantics, we used it. Otherwise, if there was any ambiguity, we
steered clear, and created a new attribute.

So the new attributes are precisely to provide clarity of meaning.

Using the new attributes for something other than what they were
intended for, takes us right back to the situation we're trying to
escape from.

Regards,

Mark

-- 
Mark Birbeck, webBackplane

mark.birbeck@webBackplane.com

http://webBackplane.com/mark-birbeck

webBackplane is a trading name of Backplane Ltd. (company number
05972288, registered office: 2nd Floor, 69/85 Tabernacle Street,
London, EC2A 4RR)

Received on Monday, 15 September 2008 11:07:31 UTC