Re: Microdata design philosophies

Hello again Tab,

Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 5:10 PM, Martin McEvoy <martin@weborganics.co.uk> wrote:
>   
>> Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
>>     
>>> On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 4:59 PM, Martin McEvoy <martin@weborganics.co.uk>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> No actually it isn't RDFa exist because people want to embed
>>>> "specifically"
>>>> RDF in X/HTML
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> That's not a use-case.  Nobody runs around thinking, "You know what
>>> this page needs?  Some RDF!".
>>>       
>> You are a very funny man, do you need sleep
>>
>> RDFa (or *Resource Description Framework - in - attributes*)
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rdfa
>>     
>
> Have you ever had a problem that is solved by RDF?
>   

Me personally no, but I would guess that quite a few people have,
> Or have you had problems that can be solved by embedding data in a
> page so that scrapers/spiders/scripts/etc. can access it and associate
> it with human-visible content, 

The above is the greatest problem I hope, that is why microformats and 
RDFa exist today is it not,  because people want to make small controble 
bits of their websites available to scrapers, spiders, web applications 
etc and associate it with human-visible content..

> and used RDF as a tool to encode that
> data and then RDFa as a tool to embed it?
>
> If the latter, then RDF isn't a requirement, it's just a tool.  It may
> be a good tool, but that's beside the point for the moment.  It's not
> a *necessary* tool required by the problem.
>   
So again what is the point of Microdata? do you think its a "*necessary* 
tool", when other tools that are widely understood, implemented and 
respected exist already that do exactly the same job?

> If the former, then I'm interested in what this problem would look like!
>   

Indeed ...
> ~TJ
>   

Best wishes

-- 
Martin McEvoy

http://weborganics.co.uk/

"You may find it hard to swallow the notion that anything as large and apparently inanimate as the Earth is alive."
Dr. James Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia

Received on Thursday, 15 October 2009 23:34:27 UTC