Re: Microdata vocabulary syntax

On Oct 5, 2009, at 3:00 PM, John Giannandrea wrote:

> The updated microdata specification is a great improvement and  
> covers many use cases I can envision for it.
>
> I would like to suggest that the spec can be simplified further by  
> removing the reversed DNS labels.
>
> Microdata supports short unqualified names, as well as fully  
> qualified URIs for itemprop, itemid and itemtype.  As far as I can  
> determine the reverse DNS labels do not provide any more  
> functionality than URIs so the spec could be simplified by  
> eliminating the duplication.  The argument could be made that  
> reverse DNS labels are nicer to look at, but if aesthetics are  
> important then authors will presumably use itemtype and short  
> property names.
>
> I also have a concern that the reverse DNS syntax introduces a new  
> idiom (e.g. that http://example.com/foo == com.example.foo) which is  
> new to the web.  While URIs have their own issues, they are well  
> known to the web community.

That's not an equivalence, it's just an example of how you might  
generate a reverse-DNS style name if you choose to use them. For  
purposes of RDF conversion, "com.example.foo" is equivalent to "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/microdata#com.example.foo 
". Otherwise, you can treat the space or reverse-dns names as  
completely separate from URIs.

  - Maciej

Received on Tuesday, 6 October 2009 09:17:29 UTC