Re: Microdata design philosophies

Martin McEvoy On 09-10-16 23.19:

> Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
>> Martin McEvoy On 09-10-15 23.59:
>>
>>> Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
>>>> On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 4:33 PM, Martin McEvoy 
>>>> <martin@weborganics.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>  
>>>>> Itemscope, itemprop, itemref...etc..etc don't sound human friendly 
>>>>> at all,


>>>> You kidding?  Prepending everything is *awesome*,


>>> If you say so tab ;)
>> On this particular issue, I agree with Tab that it is practical that 
>> they all begin with the same "prefix" - item*.
> 
> Again if you say so, I don't agree sorry, the word "item" is 
> semantically barren to me, it means nothing (don't tell me that was the 
> intention?).


Let go the string 'item' (which should have been 'microdata:') ;-)

Tab commented the idea of prepending attributes with the same 
string. Example: Aria was planned as aria:attr=, it became 
aria-attr= in HTML 5, it could also have become ariaattr= ...

Tony Ross, in his extensibility proposal, discusses the technical 
advantages of namespaces for authors, but draws a link between 
prefixing and prepending, saying that  prepending could be *made* 
to work more or less like namespaces [1]:

 > ] Of course, this scenario could work with prefixes if query
 > mechanisms let you match only part of a name. For example,
 > using something like "my_*" to match all elements beginning
 > with "my_". To my knowledge this is not possible with existing
 > APIs. [

>> It is like with namespaces and namespace prefixes - simple and 
>> effective. Easy for authors to understand.
> 
> you sound like a RDFa advocate from that last statement ;)

I support keeping RDFa and Microdata out of the HTML 5 spec. [2]

>> I'm glad to see that a Google internal research has proved it.
> 
> Google internal research has proved what exactly?


I think it is brilliant that, after having tested his proposal on 
some users/authors, Ian almost introduced a microdata prefix. (And 
  just now, he also dropped the DNS URIs/reversed domains.)  With 
enough time with the testers, then perhaps he landed on RDFa. :-)

 
> The entire microdata proposal so far to me is Bogus semantics, the worst 
> kind of "cargo cultism" I've seen in a very long time
> 
> look at this example:
> 
> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/microdata.html#the-basic-syntax

   [...]

> How Is a newcomer to HTML or the semantic web going to make of all that?
> Does the above seem a little much just to mark up around 18 characters 
> of data?
> Do you think a search engine will understand the above example, knowing 
> that they cant reason like humans.
> 
> It ridiculous, and it gets worse the further along you get. its an ugly 
> specification, totally unexpected from a learned community.


I would be happy to be able to say I know HTML, without having to 
learn Microdata first.

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Oct/0509
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Oct/0531
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Friday, 16 October 2009 23:19:00 UTC