Re: Absorbing Microdata

Sebastian,

On Sep 15, 2010, at 05:52 , Sebastian Heath wrote:

> Manu,
> 
>    Thanks for picking this up on twiiter. The question was somewhat
> inspired by not wanting to put both microdata and rdfa in a document.
> And it also occurred to me that the RDFa 1.1 profile mechanism could
> play role.
> 
> If there is a profile, it similarly defines the processing of itemtype
> and itemprop. That's a small(?) extension of the model you describe.
> 

This is not a small extension at all. What you propose would mean to introduce a mechanism whereby one could dynamically add new attributes to the core RDFa processing. Ie, modify the processing rules of RDFa run-time. I must admit I would be pretty much opposed to do that in the current round of RDFa; it is just way too complex for my taste right now.

> But I like the separate document for defining how to interpret
> microdata as RDFa. An '-i microdata' flag for RDFa parsers.
> 

Yes, as I said in my other mail, if there was a microdata->RDFa mapping, that could work and would be good. So, no good deed goes unpunished: do you think you know somebody who could/would write such a document? :-)

Cheers

Ivan


> All in the spirit of "just throwing it out there".
> 
> -Sebastian
> 
> On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 11:19 PM, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com> wrote:
>> Here's an interesting idea from Sebastian Heath via Twitter:
>> 
>>> sebastianheath: Has anybody thought about merging rdfa and microdata >
>> via @itemprop? So that itemprop/property are interchangeable. #rdfa
>>> #microdata
>> 
>> It's interesting because I can almost see an alternative document that
>> tells RDFa processors how to interpret Microdata markup via the RDFa
>> Processing rules. Note that this would be a document that is completely
>> external to RDFa Core, XHTML+RDFa, and HTML+RDFa.
>> 
>> The preliminary updates to the processing rules in an external document
>> that would allow this to happen are below. Here is the translation table
>> from Microdata to RDFa:
>> 
>> Microdata        RDFa
>> ---------        ----
>> itemscope        typeof=""
>> itemref          about="#ITEMREF_VALUE" or about="FULL_URI"
>> itemtype         typeof="ITEMTYPE_VALUE" (OVERRIDES itemscope)
>> itemprop         property="FULL_URI" or property="MODDED_ITEMPROP_VAL"
>> 
>> where MODDED_ITEMPROP_VAL is "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab#" +
>> attribute value of itemprop.
>> 
>> There are still problems with nesting itemprops/itemscopes and the types
>> that Microdata has specified for vcard, vevent and work... don't know if
>> anybody else has looked at this yet. Just throwing it out there.
>> 
>> -- manu
>> 
>> --
>> Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny)
>> President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
>> blog: Saving Journalism - The PaySwarm Developer API
>> http://digitalbazaar.com/2010/09/12/payswarm-api/
>> 
>> 
> 


----
Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
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