- From: Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com>
- Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2011 10:36:00 -0700
- To: Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net>
- Cc: HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
Based on some private correspondence, please consider this to be a Formal Objection. On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 8:53 AM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 7:59 AM, Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net> wrote: >> === Arguments not considered: >> >> Following are either direct quotes or paraphrases of arguments which >> were put forward which were not considered. >> >> Running examples from the OpenGraph Protocol site through the >> facebook linter shows that removing the prefix declaration has no >> effect but changing it prevents any properties from being recognised. >> Code inspection of some of the other tools indicates that there are >> clients in Python, PHP, Ruby and Java that depend on literal matching >> of the string "og:". >> >> No change proposal was put forward suggesting that all usages be >> migrated to fixed prefixes. Nor was there any evidence put forward >> that fixes to these tools would break content. The fact that these >> tools have bugs is uncontested but that, in itself, does not help >> identify the proposal that draws the weakest objections. > ... >> It would be important to know if Facebook's and Google's content >> consuming code could be made work with prebound prefixes for >> compatibility with legacy content that uses prefixes. >> >> We only consider proposals which actually were put forward. Neither >> change proposal proposed standardizing Facebook's or Google's prefixes. > > I object to these two arguments not being considered, as they are > directly relevant to the "we already have legacy content using > prefixes" argument, which was considered to be the strongest argument > and thus in need of disproving. > > If a large fraction of the legacy processing tools do *not* recognize > the prefix mechanism, but instead rely on fixed prefixes (that is, > just specially-qualified names), then that is strong evidence that > prefixes are too complicated, as multiple tools get them completely > wrong. > > Further, if, as a result of multiple tools actually recognizing > specially-qualified names instead of names with namespace prefixes, a > significant percentage of authored content contains "invalid" RDFa > with wrong or missing prefix declarations, that is also strong > evidence that prefixes are too complicated, and further, it is strong > evidence that the "legacy content" does *not* actually use the prefix > mechanism, but instead uses another mechanism to specially-qualify the > names (generally, fixed prefixes) which is invalid according to RDFa > and which would *fail* to be processed in conformant RDFa processors. > > That last bit is very important. If we must have RDFa, then I > strongly object to any decision which pushes us down the RSS path > where no processor is conformant, and the successful processors must > use expensive reverse engineering to find the union of non-conformant > behaviors which successfully process an appropriately large fraction > of legacy content. We're already walking this road, but we change > course with appropriate action now. > > ~TJ
Received on Tuesday, 29 March 2011 17:36:55 UTC