Re: RDFa and Microformats

Hello Mark

Martin McEvoy wrote

[......]
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> It's a little ironic, given that we specifically went out of our way
>>>> to ensure that RDFa didn't conflict with Microformats.  
>>> It does When you are asking the users of RDFa to mark up vevents like:
>>>
>>> <div typeof="event:Vevent">
>>>  <h3 property="event:summary">Have I Got Old News For You</h3>
>>>  <p property="event:location">BBC2</p>
>>>  <p><span property="event:dtstart" 
>>> content="2008-06-28T21:00:00">Saturday 28
>>> June,
>>>    9</span>-<span property="event:dtend"
>>> content="2008-06-28T21:30:00">9.30pm</p>
>>>  <p property="event:description">Team captains Paul Merton and Ian 
>>> Hislop
>>>    are joined by returning guest host Jeremy Clarkson and
>>>    panellists Danny Baker and Germaine Greer for the
>>>    topical news quiz. <abbr title="in stereo">[S]</abbr></p>
>>> </div>
>>>
>>> http://rdfa.info/wiki/Tutorials#vEvent
>>>     
>>
>> That's how it is for now -- true.
So I am presuming that you are working on ways to fix the Microformats v 
RDFa issue's

Talking of  "hacks" why is this NOT a "hack" : 
http://wiki.digitalbazaar.com/en/HAudio_RDFa? it looks like a direct rip 
from the Microformats wiki,

RDFa is Behaving a little like "The Borg" dont you think,  "You will be 
assimilated"  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_(Star_Trek) :-)

>>
>> But we put a lot of work into getting the fundamentals right, and now
>> it will be very easy to provide ways to 'default' namespaces.
>>
>> Co-opting attributes without any plan, on other hand, will simply
>> undermine the fundamentals.
>>  
>>> Its just seems counter productive to me? It seems RDFa can help the 
>>> wider
>>> community by suggesting....
>>>     
>> Our primary goal is to help the wider community. :)
>>
>> We'll do that...but we'll do it right.
?.... ok I'll take your word for that...

>>
>>
>>  
>>> <div class="vevent">
>>>  <h3 class="summary">Have I Got Old News For You</h3>
>>>  <p class="location">BBC2</p>
>>>  <p><span property="dtstart" content="2008-06-28T21:00:00">Saturday 
>>> 28 June,
>>>    9</span>-<span property="dtend" 
>>> content="2008-06-28T21:30:00">9.30pm</p>
>>>  <p class="description">Team captains Paul Merton and Ian Hislop
>>>    are joined by returning guest host Jeremy Clarkson and
>>>    panellists Danny Baker and Germaine Greer for the
>>>    topical news quiz. <abbr title="in stereo">[S]</abbr></p>
>>> </div>
>>>
>>> ...is an example, This way you help the BBC, you help the Microformats
>>> Community, and you help RDFa by making it possible for authors with 
>>> only a
>>> basic understanding of html can get to grips with RDFa.
>>>     
>>
>> As I said, we will provide ways to make writing RDFa easier.
>>
>> But not the way you are proposing.
>>
>>
Sigh!
>>  
>>> Why does It have to be All or nothing? RDFa (so I am now lead to 
>>> believe) is
>>> JUST about RDF isn't it? how a publisher extracts that information 
>>> Is up to
>>> him?
>>>     
>>
>> You seem to be missing the key point, which is that Microformats has
>> reached an impasse because it does not have a generic parsing
>> algorithm. 
Old News I'm afraid Microformats do have a generic parsing model just 
because you cant read it on a page somewhere , again this is Work in 
progress by many members of the Microformats Comunity,  Brian Suda, Ben 
West, Myself are some of the people who spring to mind who are actively 
working this Problem. more notably  Toby Inkster with this page 
http://microformats.org/wiki/parsing-brainstorming ..

>> One of its strengths was that it provided small and easily
>> learnable formats that authors could quickly add to their documents.
>> But one of its weaknesses was that each of those formats could
>> conflict with the others.

Not as yet this was only an issue when haudio decided to use "title" 
instead of  "fn" that caused issues with the current parsing model of  
hcard, that issue will be reverted in version 1.0 of hAudio.
>>
>> Many people knew that this was going to be a big problem all along, so
>> we began with the most difficult problem first, and that is why RDFa
>> allows any format to be mixed with any other format.
except Microformats.
>>
>> Now, as you rightly say, we need to add the shorthands to make things
>> easier, but I can assure you that is a lot easier than creating a
>> generic syntax. :)

I'll bet it is :-)
>>
>> So it's not "all or nothing"; it's just that we will add the support
>> for shorthands with the same care that we created the entire RDFa
>> architecture.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Mark
>>   
>
Best Wishes

Martin McEvoy
>

Received on Monday, 15 September 2008 15:18:06 UTC