Re: RDFa and Microformats

Martin McEvoy wrote:
> 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,

That's because it started out as a direct rip from the Microformats wiki
- the fact that it is so close to hAudio was deliberate. The intention
was to create a cross-community vocabulary that would work for people
jumping between RDFa and Microformats. The outcome of that research was
this:

http://purl.org/media/audio

The Audio RDF Vocabulary above has a clean/direct mapping to/from
Microformats hAudio.

The hAudio RDFa specification was replaced by the Audio RDF Vocabulary
several months ago. I have added a note to the page you linked to in
order to make that decision more clear and highlight the historical
nature of that document[1].

If there are "hacks", please enlighten me because I am unaware of there
being any and I would certainly want to fix them if they exist.

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

Slow your roll, Martin - some of the stuff you've written lately seems
to imply that there is some sort of arrogance/hidden agenda that is
being carried out by this community instead of calm rational thought
behind the decisions that were made on RDFa. Mark has made several valid
points that seem to have been completely ignored (or misunderstood).

While I don't think that re-using @content in Microformat-only markup is
an issue... it certainly is an issue when you mix Microformats and RDFa.
It is a piece-meal solution as it only addresses the Microformats
accessibility problem, not the larger problem of a unified prefixing[2]
and parsing mechanism.

When you say stuff like this:

> Martin McEvoy wrote:
> I'm afraid Microformats do have a generic parsing model

... it becomes clear that you don't grasp the fundamentals of what a
"generic parsing model" means. Microformats absolutely do not have a
generic parsing model. You will be very hard pressed to make that argument.

Remember that we're all after the same thing here - practical web
semantics. We all continue to strive and work together in reaching this
goal and pointing fingers at your colleagues alluding to "borg"-ish
behavior doesn't help move us forward.

This community is a very rational, methodical group who cares about
semantic web scalability. I have never seen a good rational argument
fail here. If you're not making headway with your argumentation, take a
look at the premises that you are working with and see if they're in error.

Here are the premises that I've seen you assert that are in error:

- Microformats have a generic parsing model
- RDF and Microformats have incompatible data models
- Re-using RDFa attributes for Microformats will have acceptable
  consequences
- Distributed innovation leads to anti-social behavior
- Namespaces and CURIEs are the same thing
- There already exists a data model that works "better" than RDF for the
  purposes of Microformats
- @typeof is the same as @class
- Only Microformats are about what you can see on a web page and the
  "take away web"
- RDFa has ignored the here and now

If you agree with any of the statements above, then you should spend
some time re-thinking those premises before continuing because there is
proof counter to what you are asserting.

Our goal should not be to -only- fix the Microformats accessibility
issue, but to fix -all- Microformats parsing model issues and provide a
mechanism to allow other non-Microformats approaches to exist. This
isn't just about the Microformats community. I think we are close in
accomplishing this and it is with this goal in mind that we should
consider proposals such as re-using @content for Microformats.

I'm sure you will agree that re-using @content in uFs doesn't actually
address the real problem:

Microformats do not have a robust parsing model.

-- manu

[1]http://wiki.digitalbazaar.com/index.php?title=HAudio_RDFa&diff=2496&oldid=2352
[2]http://rdfa.info/wiki/RDFa_Vocabularies

-- 
Manu Sporny
President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Bitmunk 3.0 Website Launches
http://blog.digitalbazaar.com/2008/07/03/bitmunk-3-website-launches

Received on Monday, 15 September 2008 16:37:12 UTC