Re: CfC: Publish HTML5 Microdata as First Public Working Draft and a new HTML5 Working Draft

On Thu, 2010-01-07 at 22:12 -0800, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> Silence will be taken to mean there is no objection, but positive  
> responses are encouraged. If there are no objections by Thursday,  
> January 24, this resolution will carry. 

I have very mixed feelings about this one. I've been trying to come up
with a clear response for a few days, but my position seems to waver
between objecting and offering my services to co-edit such a draft, and
everywhere in between.

On one hand, I don't think Microdata (as-is) is very good. On the other
hand, with a bit more work, I do think it has the potential to become a
useful format.

In an ideal world, I'd like to see RDFa take some ideas from Microdata
(I'm not going to go into specifics in this message) and the need for
the latter to evaporate. In which case putting Microdata on the
Recommendation track at this stage might lead to author confusion
further down the line if the W3C endorses two competing standards for
embedding data in (X)HTML.

My suggestion is that Microdata should be allowed to evolve as an
editors' draft until we can see the direction RDFa 1.1 is headed. There
doesn't seem to be any pressing need to publish Microdata as a WD right
now; there seems to be no harm in delaying.

I'd also suggest that Microdata be worked on not in isolation by the
HTML Working Group, but by a joint task force formally involving, say,
the Semantic Web Interest Group, and with a liason to the RDFa Working
Group, assuming such a group will exist.

So as I said, I do want to support progression with Microdata, and hope
that I can contribute positively to its development, but I'm not sure
the time is right to publish as a FPWD. This is not however a formal
objection.

-- 
Toby A Inkster
<mailto:mail@tobyinkster.co.uk>
<http://tobyinkster.co.uk>

Received on Tuesday, 12 January 2010 00:10:24 UTC