Re: HREF attribute in elements other than A and LINK

+1 with all your arguments!

Ivan

Ben Adida wrote:
> (Chair hat off)
> 
> Mark Birbeck wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
>> My point about starting with a 'mental model' is only to suggest that
>> we look at how something fits with existing HTML, and existing
>> practice. The idea was simply that if we're happy with the model we
>> can look at how we explain it to other people. (It's actually how
>> nearly everything in RDFa has been designed, just not always
>> explicitly.)
> 
> So, I'm not happy with the model of adding HREF everywhere in something
> called XHTML1.1+RDFa. Mark, you've always pointed out that RDFa is
> primarily aimed at HTML authors adding semantic markup. I mostly agree
> with you. With that assumption, I can only imagine an HTML author being
> thoroughly confused by HREF everywhere, wondering, "where's the
> clickable link? How do I *make* it clickable?". Why would an HTML author
> do this? What is the use case that would lead him to put an HREF on a
> DIV as far as the HTML author is concerned? This adds a whole level of
> inherently invisible metadata, where the primary goal of RDFa is to mark
> up visible data.
> 
> Regarding acceptability of this approach, I'm in full agreement with
> Ivan on this: the backlash against this will be enormous. We *have* to
> plan for it, and, more importantly, we have to ask ourselves: what is
> the cost/benefit of this quasi-ensured backlash? I see a high cost, and
> I don't see the benefit wrt our goals.
> 
> Finally, the biggest worry I have is regarding the perception of this
> change. If we add HREF in a bunch of places, we're really changing the
> document model for HTML in ways that even adding REL didn't do (since
> that is still about marking up visible content). It's not XHTML1.1
> anymore. It's clearly XHTML1.2. And the perception will be that we're
> trying to squeeze XHTML2 features into XHTML1 via RDFa. That is a
> dangerous proposition: we should not make RDFa an even bigger lightning
> bolt for criticism, if we can help it.
> 
> -Ben

-- 

Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
URL: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
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