Re: Microdata

"Microdata" should never have been developed in the first place.

Anyway: The inventor and former main proponent of "microdata" seems to
be no longer active here and nobody else here seems to be very
interested in continuing any work on it. Keeping it in HTML5 therefore
would be the *worst* solution.

That schema.org promotes "Microdata" is something which should be
adressed by those in charge of schema.org. Strangely they link to the
"HTML Microdata Working Draft from 24 May 2011:
http://dev.w3.org/html5/md-LC/
and not to the newer one from 25 October 2012:
http://www.w3.org/TR/microdata/

I just notived that a *very* recent Editor's Draft of that document is
also available (20 May 2013):
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/microdata/master/

So my guess is that Ian is working on that document so that it can be
published as a Note at some point.

Cheers,
Andreas
---

Charles McCathie Nevile:
> Hi,
> 
> Microdata is included in the HTML spec, and RDFa Lite (which does the
> same thing) isn't.
> 
> There is a proposal to remove it from HTML5 and delay it to HTML 5.1.
> This seems a very bad idea, and we object.
> 
> Microdata is the format most heavily promoted by schema.org, and has
> wide implementation. We count it on a significant proportion of sites in
> Russia. We find it far more often than RDFa - presumably because it is
> implemented and promoted by both Yandex (the number one search engine in
> Russia) and Google (the global number one), and therefore considered
> important by developers.
> 
> It has been mentioned that there will not be sufficient browser support
> to pass CR. We believe this argument to be flawed because browser
> support for microdata is irrelevant. Browsers are not to the primary
> target of microdata and were not relevant to the broad uptake it has
> already seen. Implementation and interoperability should be measured on
> usage such as schema.org, which has built up a significant set of
> resources, with processors implemented independently by multiple
> competing search providers and content produced by a significant
> proportion of Web Developers.
> 
> We are sympathetic to the argument that taking microdata out of HTML5
> improves modularity and is therefore good, and to the argument that
> removing microdata puts it on a more logical level footing with RDFa
> Lite in public perception, reducing the risk of suggesting one is better
> than the other for use with HTML, instead of leaving it to the market to
> determine. Although these are fundamentally political, rather than pure
> technical arguments, they are not incorrect.
> 
> Unfortunately we are currently unable to provide significant editing
> resources of the calibre and experience with the HTML specification that
> is already available to the HTML Working group. If those editors are
> really unable to extract the spec and progress it to Recommendation, we
> believe that the next-best option is to keep it in HTML5.
> 
> cheers
> 
> Chaals

Received on Monday, 20 May 2013 18:43:46 UTC