Re: @rel syntax in RDFa (relevant to ISSUE-60 discussion), was: Using XMLNS in link/@rel

Mark Nottingham wrote:
> 
> Yes, absolutely; users will cherry-pick features from different versions 
> of HTML to suit their desires, and plant them into whatever version of 
> the format they like / their CMS supports / is the latest fashion. 
> They'll expect browsers to seamlessly handle this.
> 
> This only underlines the importance making the syntax and disambiguation 
> of @rel compatible among the different versions of HTML; that would 
> serve these users well. Using a different version attribute is not an 
> excuse to throw backwards compatibility out of the window, and it's not 
> like RDFa is an old specification, so ignorance of the issues 
> surrounding versioning and compatibility can't be claimed.
> 
> It certainly doesn't justify putting the subset of users who want to do 
> the right thing and have valid, unambiguous markup into a place where 
> they can't, because the features they need are spread out among those 
> incompatible versions of HTML. Not every consumer of HTML is a browser.

+1

>> Users who are attracted to RDFa today are likely to have been 
>> influenced either directly or indirectly by Zeldman and his brethren.  
>> They include an XHTML DOCTYPE and try to be careful about quotes.  The 
>> few that actually read specs will see that XHTML 1.0 Transitional 
>> allows the use of the text/html MIME type.
> 
> Sorry, RDFa just became mainstream, when the Creative Commons started 
> showing people how to use it by example. Speaking of attraction, I'm 
> very much reminded of the US legal concept of an attractive nuisance 
> here. Anyway...

+1

>  From where I'm sitting, RDFa should not have gone out the door as it 
> is, and because it did we have some damage to contain. Likely it's not 
> too bad, owing to the bad state of @rel in HTML anyway, but it has 
> effectively created one more thing to sniff in HTML -- "what rel 
> convention is in use here?" -- with all of the ambiguity and issues that 
> entails.
> 
> So, I have a fair idea of what I'm going to write in the next Link draft 
> now (see recent messages to Ben for a rough idea). What I really want to 
> know -- and this is why the TAG is still on the CC list here -- is 
> what's going to be done to prevent this from happening the next time.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> P.S. Sam, I'm confused; you've brought up whitehouse.gov in this context 
> a few times, but AFAICT they don't serve RDFa on their front page. Yes, 
> they're serving XHTML with a text/html media type, but that's very wide 
> and understood practice. Please explain?

You are correct that it is not on their front page.

http://rdfa.info/2009/01/29/whitehousegov-uses-rdfa/ =>

http://www.whitehouse.gov/copyright/ =>

<a rel="cc:attributionURL" property="cc:attributionName" 
xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" href="http://www.whitehouse.gov">

- Sam Ruby

Received on Sunday, 1 March 2009 12:12:41 UTC