Re: RDFa and Web Directions North 2009

Kingsley Idehen wrote:
> Sam,
> 
> I have one question, what does this mean?
> 
> <<
> Again, I'm not certain that marketing is the right answer.  At the 
> present time, the editor of the HTML 5 specification is profoundly 
> unconvinced that RDFa either has a valid use case or is the best way to 
> address the use cases that have been provided.  I see several ways 
> forward, none of which involves battles, direction from on high, or 
> marketing.
> 
> 1) Convince Ian that RDFa has merit.
>  >>
> 
> Why does Ian have to be convinced?

Ian only needs to be be convinced if you snip my reply at the first 
bullet point.

> All references to "Ian" are always about him being the sole decision maker.
> 
> Does an "Editor" determine the fate of a spec, solely?

I won't duck the question.  Yes, the amount of editorial control that 
Ian exercises over his draft is, in my experience, unprecedented.

> I desperately hope I am simply misunderstanding the general rhetoric 
> around HTML5 and RDFa.

Anybody is allowed to produce a spec.  In fact, the license that Ian 
made his spec available under has liberal provisions for productions of 
derivative works.  If such a spec attracts a larger consensus than the 
one that Ian is producing, it will be adopted by the HTML working group.

That being said, producing something as complicated as HTML is 
difficult.  There are pieces include the DOM and JavaScript that need to 
be fit together.  There are legitimate questions in these areas as it 
has been observed that RDFa was designed based on the presumption of 
XHTML parsing rules, and HTML parsing rules differ in visible ways from 
XHTML.  Ways that affect the specific names of attributes chose in RDFa.

For something resembling RDFa to be included in HTML 5, somebody needs 
to do the work and gain consensus.  That means either convincing Ian, 
convincing somebody else, or picking up that work yourself.

- Sam Ruby

Received on Friday, 13 February 2009 16:46:43 UTC