RE: RDFa and Web Directions North 2009

Ian Hickson:
> Just to clarify -- while I'm being devil's advocate below, that doesn't
> mean I personally have an opinion on this matter. I apply the same
> skeptical standards to everything that is proposed for HTML5. (If you
> think HTML5 is bloated, just imagine how big it would be if I didn't!)
> 


Mark Birbeck:
> But the attributes in RDFa are not prefixed -- @about, @resource,
> @datatype and @content are new attributes, whilst @rel, @rev, @href
> and @src already exist

At a wild guess, this is the heart of the technical disagreement:
The additional 4 attributes might cost too much for people who do not need or want or gain benefit from RDFa.

Might it be possible to carry the same information within HTML5 without imposing the cost on people who don't need it.
Are there extension points that could be used?
If the cost for non RDFa people is 0, then it gives the RDFa community space to demonstrate value with running code and deployed apps.


e.g. could these additional attributes be included in a script data block element?

<script type="text/rdfa">
 about="http://example.org"
 datatype="xsd:int"
</script>


Not pretty, but lower cost for the many who won't be using RDFa, and workable for the few who will.
(although not wanting to get back to the rdf/xml in comments within HTML) ... are we allowed an XML element inside a script element - that would be less ugly.

Jeremy

Received on Saturday, 14 February 2009 02:39:06 UTC