RDFa and Microformats

Hello All..

Some time ago I asked can I use non RDF vocablaries in RDFa such as 
Microformats without using Prefixes / namespaces see: 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-in-xhtml-tf/2008Aug/0081.html.

I did not ask the Microformats Community this question because there 
would have been little or No feedback which is as expected Microformats 
intentionally go out of their way to solve the simplest problem which is 
Vocabulary not really like RDFa which is Syntax the principles and rules 
for constructing Vocabularies, two different things.
I received an un-inspiring response from the RDFa community,  which 
surprised me a little because later that month it was part of the Agenda 
at the following Telecon meeting on the 28th of that month 
http://www.w3.org/2008/08/28-rdfa-minutes.html#item03. I wish I could be 
part of those meetings I would have explained further.

So now I will :-)

My response would have been *If* the RDFa community decided that 
Microformats are expressing semantics( which is Acknowledged ) and 
should be somehow ported to RDFa, Microformats do  this using mainly 
using just Class attributes If you are going to "bring them to the fold" 
@class should be added to RDFa as one of its properties. Currently 
@class expresses little semantics in HTML even in microformats this is 
true without metadata profiles. RDFa has the most excellent opportunity 
to change all  this in a very simple way @class will only generate a 
triple if it is using a pre defined value listed on 
http://microformats.org/wiki/existing-classes, because all existing and 
future microformats will generally use class names listed on that page, 
re-use existing microformats is part of the principles of microformats 
and that page hardly ever changes, All existing Microformated pages, 
Millions of them,  could then potentially become part of RDFa in that 
way almost instantly and So Supporting Microformats in the best way and 
not *breaking* them.

I really do Like RDFa It is an easy syntax once you get used to it and 
understand that you don't have to mark up your entire web page in RDFa 
just little bits will do. I believe that RDFa well be a popular markup 
language, especialy now Internet Explorer 8 supports XHTML now (at last) 
publishers eventually will not have a problem with application/xhtml+xml 
in fact it will be cool I think!


Best Wishes

Martin McEvoy

Received on Thursday, 11 September 2008 22:37:34 UTC