[whatwg] Ghosts from the past and the semantic Web

It makes sense to exempt metadata from its own influence and putting it
somewhere else is the easy way to do it.  Creating exemption rules is the
hard way.  However, if you are able to produce a complete and tractable set
of rules, I shall be able to live with it.  I am unable to imagine it, but
that is just my lack of domain knowledge.

Chris

 

  _____  

From: whatwg-bounces@lists.whatwg.org
[mailto:whatwg-bounces at lists.whatwg.org] On Behalf Of Tab Atkins Jr.
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2008 9:18 PM
To: Kristof Zelechovski
Cc: Ben Adida; whatwg at lists.whatwg.org; Eduard Pascual; Shannon
Subject: Re: [whatwg] Ghosts from the past and the semantic Web

 

On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 1:59 PM, Kristof Zelechovski <giecrilj at stegny.2a.pl>
wrote:

I am not opposing local metadata; I have already explained you can use the
SCRIPT element for the purpose.  I only say that metadata should not be
inside content they describe in order to avoid circularity.  This is a
philosophical objection, not a technical one.

Chris


Honestly, Kristof, I think it's simple to assume that the metadata semantics
is in a different 'stream' that the main document, and thus you don't have
recursive metadata about metadata.

Imagine for a moment that CSS had an XML syntax (::shudder::).  We wouldn't
assume that the styling information applies to stuff within the <css>
element, even if a selector *would* naively match an element there.  Styling
information doesn't style itself by useful definition, and metadata doesn't
impart semantics to itself.  Any occurence of accidental self-reference is
assumed to be just that - an accident - and discarded as spurious.

In a real-world example, no existing parser that recognizes @rel=license
assumes that you are licensing the actual text/picture within the license.
It's assumed to apply to everything in the document *except* for the license
data itself.

~TJ

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Received on Thursday, 28 August 2008 12:26:25 UTC