Re: rdfa vs. links

Lin Clark wrote:
>> With RDFa, when a user cuts and pastes visible HTML content, they also get
>> the RDFa that is exactly associated with that content.  There is a demo of a
>> Javascript page that can receive the paste and display the RDFa nicely.
>>
> 
> I'm a proponent of RDFa, but I actually see this particular behavior as a
> bug, not a feature. Because the RDFa is hidden, you can easily copy text
> from the Web and paste it somewhere where the hidden tags will make
> incorrect assertions.
> 
> For instance, when I copy and paste a co-worker's name into a page on my Web
> site, it would copy the foaf:name property. The foaf:name property worked
> well on my coworkers Web site, where the foaf:name took the URI defined in
> the parent element as it's subject. However, when I place it in an arbitrary
> position on my page, it will then take another element for it's subject...
> for instance, it might be pasted into a div about me, in which case it would
> assert that my coworker's name is also my name.
> 
> I'd be interested to hear what other's think about this.

Personally I see this more as a "currently poorly supported feature" 
rather than a bug tbh.

For me RDFa opens the door to a world of new applications, modular 
applications which understand parts of the data on a page and can 
optionally augment the users view with more information, or allow them 
to do something with that information, use-cases range from simple 
things like "your friends x & y know the author of this post" and "good 
relations powered clients side shopping basket/wishlist" (which would 
work over any website) through to more complex applications like 
automatically aggregating your thought streams based on what you're 
reading/viewing (you are what you eat) providing you with an audit trail 
so you can see exactly where your good idea(s) came from, and where 
they're headed.

I can't see any black or white best practices here, in one use-case it's 
good to have lightweight machine readable data (ala turtle/n3 when only 
a machine is considering the data) in other cases it's good to have 
hybrid human and machine readable data, especially in an agent augmented 
world.

Best,

Nathan

Received on Sunday, 24 October 2010 22:44:25 UTC