Re: Publishing a new draft (HTML5+RDFa)

On Fri, 31 Jul 2009, Ben Adida wrote:
> 
> But it's time to stop couching your personal opinion as objective 
> "technical problems."

Usability of a language is a technical problem. Somewhat subjective, but 
certainly subject to research and reasoned arguments.


> If no one could get RDFa markup right, that would be an objective 
> technical problem.

The way that Google and Yahoo! both managed to completely screw up both 
the implementation and documentation of RDFa looks to me like good example 
of people getting RDFa markup wrong.


> Clearly, the evidence shows that people are marking up pages with RDFa 
> just fine, and people are parsing RDFa just fine.

We apparently disagree on this.


> In other words, the *only reason* that micro-data is in the HTML5 spec
> and not RDFa is because of your personal preference.

Actually the reason microdata is in the HTML5 spec and RDFa is not is that 
RDFa failed to address the use cases and requirements that were listed, 
and had the problems that I listed in my earlier e-mail (such as using 
prefixes, URIs, being overly-complex, etc).


> And in this case, it's even more singular than other aspects of HTML5, 
> because you came up with micro-data on your own, on a whim, and added it 
> to the spec before any meaningful review by anyone.

Actually I designed it based on feedback from a huge number of people. 
Adding it to the spec is how I am supposed to make proposals according to 
the HTMLWG charter, and it has received ample feedback since then too, 
including several sample implementations.


> If you won't agree to consensus for "your" version of the spec, then the 
> WG must allow other versions to be published in parallel, so that 
> consensus might emerge from competing views.

I have repeatedly said that I am completely in favour of publishing 
drafts.


> I don't think any of the three HTML5 specs are "finished." I believe 
> that all three should be published for the heartbeat requirement.

I don't believe anyone has objected to this.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Friday, 31 July 2009 19:14:35 UTC