Re: More direct conversion from microdata to RDFa?

On Wed, 12 Oct 2011 10:56:49 -0400
Stéphane Corlosquet <scorlosquet@gmail.com> wrote:

> RDFa could use a similar mechanism, and use the first token of
> @typeof to construct the namespace that we currently put in @vocab.

I did suggest that some time ago [1], but people objected at the time
saying that it was perhaps a bit too magical. I have since come around
to that way of thinking. Magical side-effects like this can be
surprising to newbies. And in programming (and markup) surprises are
generally considered to be a bad thing.

@typeof is already pretty overloaded, not only setting an rdf:type, but
also creating a new blank node in the absence of @about. (And it's
badly named too. In earlier RDFa drafts it was @instanceof, which is
much closer to its real meaning. @oftype would have been clearer
than @typeof.)

It would raise all kinds of odd questions like:

<div typeof="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person">
  <span property="name">Bob</span> wrote
  <span rel="made" rev="maker">
    <!-- Chaining in operation. Now we're describing a different
         resource, which is not a foaf:Person. Is foaf still the
         vocab? -->
    <cite property="title">RDFa for Dummies</cite>
  </span>
</div>

<div typeof="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person">
  <span property="name">Bob</span> wrote
  <span rel="made" rev="maker">
    <span about="#dummies" typeof="">
      <!-- What about now? -->
      <cite property="title">RDFa for Dummies</cite>
    </span>
  </span>
</div>

<div typeof="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person">
  <span property="name">Bob</span> wrote
  <span rel="made" rev="maker">
    <span about="#dummies">
      <!-- What about now? -->
      <cite property="title">RDFa for Dummies</cite>
    </span>
  </span>
</div>

<body>
  <!-- How can I assign a vocab URI to the following properties
       without creating an rdf:type triple, or a bnode? -->
  <span property="bar">Bar</span>
  <span property="baz">Baz</span>
</body>

____
1. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdfa-wg/2010Mar/0127.html

-- 
Toby A Inkster
<mailto:mail@tobyinkster.co.uk>
<http://tobyinkster.co.uk>

Received on Thursday, 13 October 2011 10:55:52 UTC