Re: ISSUE-76: Need feedback on splitting Microdata into separate specification

On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 3:39 PM, Leif Halvard Silli
<xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no> wrote:
> Exactly: Keeping microdata in, is only the start of "the grand
> mastersplan".

Correct.  Removing it is probably part of a "grand master plan" too, of course.

On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 1:59 PM, Leif Halvard Silli
<xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no> wrote:
> That's a hypothetical question which would require lots of effort to
> answer. A legitimate question _now_ is why W3C should sanction yet
> another way to do the same thing - who would that help?

I don't understand the question.  If it's intrinsically a better
technology, it would help everyone who gets to use it rather than
RDFa.

> I don't think it is hypothetical that some probably find microdata and
> RDFa roughly equally good _technology_. However, in the situation we
> are, then microdata needs to be technically better than RDFa in order
> to be a equally good _choice_. And _much_ better in order to be a
> better choice.

I don't think it would need to be very much better to be a better
choice.  There aren't very large network effects here, are there?  Few
web developers have used either technology, and it shouldn't take long
to write a microdata processor in your favorite language from scratch.

> But even if we could agree that it is much better, it
> would still be a question whether it should be in the spec.

Yes, that's an entirely separate question.  I see no reason to split
something into a separate spec if we want work on it to continue at
all.  Separate specs with cross-references are harder to read and edit
-- it's much preferable to have all elements and attributes and so on
in one place for easy reference.

Contrast to SVG or MathML, which cannot be in the HTML spec because
they're relevant outside HTML.  Separate specs are good in that case
to ensure reusability.  Microdata is not conceivably reusable outside
of HTML, so modularity is useless here.

Received on Sunday, 6 December 2009 22:13:01 UTC