Re: RDFa and Web Directions North 2009

Hi Henri,

> It is not a bug, because none of the conforming features of HTML5 (or HTML
> 4.01) depend on attributes than have a colon in their local name in
> text/html making it harmless to throw them away in non-browser apps.

Same goes for any attribute name beginning with four z's, or
containing the sequence 'banana'; none of them are required by any
particular spec, yet removing them would be somewhat cavalier.

But I note that you say "in non-browser apps"; are you saying that
attributes beginning "xmlns:" would be preserved in an HTML5 browser?


> RDFa is what makes it an issue. I posit the piece that is flawed is
> RDFa--not the way HTML parsing and infoset coercion is now defined.

Yes, you've said that. :)


>> If your point was: there are cases where *today* existing components
>> plugged together cause RDFa not to work, then yes, that's probably true. I'm
>> pretty sure this is also true for many many other things in the specs we're
>> working on.
>
>
> However, for many other things, there isn't a (bogus) claim that you only
> need to add five attributes or so and that's all. RDFa involves a countably
> infinite number of attributes that are of the most problematic kind.

Ah...the bogus word again. You certainly have a rapier-like debating
style, Henri...no mistake.

Of course, whether something is bogus or not is exactly what debates
are supposed to prove, so throwing the word around adds nothing. You
certainly haven't proved that it is 'bogus' to make the following
claim; that implementing an RDFa parser in JavaScript, on top of an
HTML or XHTML DOM -- such as in a browser -- is not at all
problematic.

Regards,

Mark

-- 
Mark Birbeck, webBackplane

mark.birbeck@webBackplane.com

http://webBackplane.com/mark-birbeck

webBackplane is a trading name of Backplane Ltd. (company number
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Received on Wednesday, 18 February 2009 15:14:24 UTC