Re: HTML WG: ISSUE-120 Use of prefixes is too complicated for a Web technology

What a riveting issue!

If I may throw in a view from the sidelines...

Hixie has a point, I think, and the part of the point that makes sense to me
is that the prefix mechanism is more complex than necessary, and therefore
more error-prone than necessary. However, I have a spec with CURIEs
included, and I would want to be able to use them for RDFa as well. To be
fairer, I think Hixie should propose something that avoids his worry, but
still delivers what we need. Since he hasn't done it, it would be nice if
someone else did.

This is probably way off the mark - please treat as a "straw man"...
(a) a registry could be set up for common namespace or prefix abbreviations.
Needs very good governance, and to be done quickly. If it works for
mime-types, why not for prefixes?
(b) have an easily distinguishable mechanism for defining one's own
prefixes, which can be more complex, but naive web authors won't ever need
to use.
I must confess I was always uneasy about using xmlns for CURIE prefixes, and
glad there will be a replacement anyway.

Could this actually be done as part of merging Microdata with RDFa?

Simon

On 15 September 2010 13:59, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com> wrote:

> Just a heads-up. The editor of the HTML5 specification has escalated an
> issue in the HTML WG that started out as a bug against RDFa in HTML.
> This concerns the design decision to use prefixes in RDFa as well as the
> concept of CURIEs:
>
> http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/issues/120
>
> The entire bug history can be found here:
>
> http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=7670
>
> -- manu
>
> --
> Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny)
> President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> blog: Saving Journalism - The PaySwarm Developer API
> http://digitalbazaar.com/2010/09/12/payswarm-api/
>
>


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Simon Grant
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