Re: Microdata design philosophies

Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 4:19 PM, Martin McEvoy <martin@weborganics.co.uk> wrote:
>   
>> look at this example:
>>
>> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/microdata.html#the-basic-syntax
>>
>> <div itemscope id="amanda"><itemref refid="a"><itemref refid="b"></div>
>> <p id="a">Name: <span itemprop="name">Amanda</span></p>
>> <div id="b" itemprop="band" itemscope id="jazzband"><itemref
>> refid="c"></div>
>> <div id="c">
>> <p>Band: <span itemprop="name">Jazz Band</span></p>
>> <p>Size: <span itemprop="size">12</span> players</p>
>> </div>
>>
>>
>> What is the above example trying to attempt?
>>     
>
> It's marking up someone's participation in some band, apparently.
>   

Really if you say so....
>   
>> What does itemscope mean?
>>     
>
> Have you read the Microdata section?  

Of course I have...
 
> @itemscope says "This chunk of
> html defines a chunk of microdata."  It scopes any children of the
> element to be part of that parent item (rather than being just random
> unconnected bits of data).
>   

And you want me to tell that to my students?  or anyone else for that 
matter.

>   
>> look at those funny little bits of mark up <itemref refid="a"><itemref
>> refid="b">, do itemref and refid confuse you? again what do they mean?
>>     
>
> Again, have you read the Microdata section?  

Again yes I have...
> <itemref> allows you to
> include data from elements that aren't children of the @itemscope.
>   

kind of like the include pattern in microformats would you say?

>> Look at every bit of content for example <span itemprop="size">12</span>,
>> what does size mean or band or any of the attribute contents?
>> 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's some example vocabulary used to illustrate the principls.
>   

An example that may get copied and pasted around the internet...
> Assume, for a moment, that a similar vocabulary existed in RDF, and
> the example was instead marked up in RDFa.
>
> How is a newcomer to HTML or the semantic web going to make of all that RDFa?
> Doesn't the RDFa seem a bit much just to mark up around 18 characters of data?
> Do you think a search engine would understand the RDFa, knowing that
> they can't reason like humans?
>   

Well at least you have a chance with either microformats or RDFa.

You still didn't answer my question...
> All of these concerns you have are *exactly* applicable to RDFa, or
> really *any* method of marking up metadata in a page (such as CRDF,
> GRDDL, etc.).
>   

Thank you for that last paragraph I'm glad you worked that one out, 
microdata doesn't actually solve any problems does it?

...

OOPs! snipped the rest of that, I've not actually said anything 
detrimental to you personally have I.

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 Saturday, 17 October 2009 02:14:25 UTC