Re: Rationale behind separate TechArticle / HowTo types?

Hey Joe, here's a simple - and, from the Google Structured Data Testing
perspective - example of an multi-type entity.  Not using the types under
discussion, but uses types well known to Google so hopefully illustrative.

You'll see here properties that aren't valid an individual type - e.g.
"sku" isn't valid for "Book" and "author" isn't valid for "Product" - but
are valid when both are declared as an array for @type.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "http://schema.org",
  "@type": ["Product", "Book"],
  "aggregateRating": {
    "@type": "AggregateRating",
    "bestRating": "100",
    "ratingCount": "24",
    "ratingValue": "87"
  },
  "sku": "1234",
  "author": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "John Steinbeck",
    "sameAs": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck"
  },
  "image": "grapes-of-wrath.jpg",
  "name": "The Grapes of Wrath",
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "price": "9.95",
    "priceCurrency": "USD"
  }
}
</script>


On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 12:48 AM, Joe Pairman <joepairman@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Richard,
>
> Thank you for the information. An example of such a multi-type entity
> would be very useful. Is there a facility for cross-linking between the two
> types so that people looking at HowTo could also see the possible joint use
> with TechArticle? (I'm not sure how the docs are generated; I assume
> automatically from an RDFSs source, so not sure if arbitrary
> cross-referencing is possible.)
>
> Who would normally update the documents? As it happens, I'll need to come
> up with an example of this multi-type entity myself for an upcoming
> presentation — would it be helpful if I made that available as a possible
> example to use in the docs?
>
> Joe
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 11:41 AM, Richard Wallis <
> richard.wallis@dataliberate.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Joe,
>>
>> The simple answer to your question is that there was probably very little
>> connection between the recent development of the HowTo
>> <http://schema.org/HowTo> type and its predecessor (by a long time)
>> TechArticle <http://schema.org/TechArticle>.  It certainly escaped my
>> notice that ‘*Example: How-to topics, step-by-step*,’ was part of the
>> TechArticle description.
>>
>> For your article that has procedural info use case I would agree that a
>> multi-type entity would be the most suitable solution.
>>
>> I suggest that the description of TechArticle is tweaked a little to
>> reference such a use, and an example or two added.
>>
>> ~Richard.
>>
>