Re: embed RDFa --> embed coolness into Yahoo search results

On Sun, 22 Mar 2009, Ben Adida wrote:
> 
> I know how people author HTML, CSS, etc.
> 
> As I've explained before, in my opinion, you have a double standard. You 
> expect that people will screw up RDFa, but somehow they'll get 
> SQL-in-the-browser right.

I am against having SQL in the browser. The Database spec exists because 
browser vendors went ahead and started implementing this without a spec, 
and it's better to have a spec for a bad idea than it is to require that 
other browsers reverse engineer each other.

Having said that, yes, I do think that authors writing Web applications 
will have an easier time understanding SQL than document authors will have 
understanding the subtlities of things like "@property is for literal 
objects, @rel is for URI objects". But that's just my opinion, we'd have 
to do usability testing to find out for sure.

Finally, I should point out that our goal should not be "be no worse than 
the worst existing feature". Our goal should be "be better than the best 
feature". "We can make this complicated because there are other 
complicated things" is a bad way to design a language.


> >> I wish you spent half as much time trying to understand the useful 
> >> aspects of RDFa as you do trying to break it :)
> > 
> > I don't understand the distinction. How else can one evaluate a 
> > technology than by trying to work out what is wrong with it?
> 
> You've claimed multiple times on the mailing list that you don't have 
> time to read our existing documents, our use cases, our mailing list 
> discussions on how decisions were made.

I have read all your specifications, am subscribed to this mailing list, 
and have discussed use cases in detail for months now, in person, in 
private e-mail, and on threads on several lists and even in blogs. Where 
have I said that I don't have time?

I'm trying to work out whether and how to address, in HTML5, the use cases 
RDF and RDFa set out to solve. This by necessity requires me to learn and 
evaluate those technologies, test existing implementations, and so on.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Monday, 23 March 2009 09:21:19 UTC