Re: [ISSUE-2] Re: Strawman microdata proposal

On 19.3.2012 9:32, Felix Sasaki wrote:

>> Any comments welcomed.

Well, I have investigated more and talked to other people. For now I see
5 ways how to express ITS:

1) Use pure XML syntax suitable for XML and XHTML content
<p its:locNote="...">...</p>

2) Use microdata in HTML5 as proposed in previous email

3) Use RDFa in HTML5 on which Tadej is working. I'm looking forward to
see outcome but I think that output will be even more baroque then
microdata as connection to the source element will have to be expressed
as an additional triplet.

4) Use custom attributes in HTML5 prefixed with its-, eg.:
<p its-locnote="...">...</p>

This is actually sort of allowed in HTML5 spec (see
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/infrastructure.html#extensibility):

"When vendor-neutral extensions to this specification are needed, either
this specification can be updated accordingly, or an extension
specification can be written that overrides the requirements in this
specification. When someone applying this specification to their
activities decides that they will recognize the requirements of such an
extension specification, it becomes an applicable specification."

Such attributes will cause no troubles in Web browsers, but page will
raise errors in validators. We can create our own "applicable
specification" for HTML5+ITS and then create our own validator.

5) Use data-* attributes in HTML5 like:
<p data-its-locnote="...">...</p>

This is valid in HTML5, but non-conforming as data-* attributes are
currently reserved for application private use only (see
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/global-attributes.html#attr-data)

"Custom data attributes are intended to store custom data private to the
page or application, for which there are no more appropriate attributes
or elements.

These attributes are not intended for use by software that is
independent of the site that uses the attributes."


For ITS in HTML5 I think that option 4) is the best while option 5) is
also quite good.

What I think we should do now is to raise bug against HTML5 spec and ask
for either allowing arbitrary prefix-* attributes or lifting existing
"private use only" clause from data-* attributes.

If there are no objection to such approach, I'm going to raise
respective HTML5 bug.

     Jirka


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