Re: rdfa vs. links

>
> With the data/metadata structure, shouldn't be a problem.
>

I'm unclear on what you mean here.


> Additionally, there are things that both the browser could do on the copy
> or that the page could do via Javascript.  You may have noticed that a
> number of newsy websites now automatically insert a source / copyright /
> link before text that you've copied from a web page.  That could be used to
> pull the proper context into the copied data/metadata region.
>

While browsers could do something, it seems unlikely that this will happen
in the near term. Having the page do it via Javascript would be a solution,
but it adds one more thing (and an undocumented thing at that) that users
have to remember to add when they add RDFa to a page.

I see the underlying concern here not as to whether a technically saavy
person can make it work, but whether the common user copying and pasting
text on the Web can make it work (or at least not screw things up). And
right now, that is definitely not the case.

-Lin

On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 4:19 AM, Stephen Williams <sdw@lig.net> wrote:

>  On 10/24/10 2:27 PM, Lin Clark wrote:
>
>  With RDFa, when a user cuts and pastes visible HTML content, they also
>> get the RDFa that is exactly associated with that content.  There is a demo
>> of a Javascript page that can receive the paste and display the RDFa nicely.
>>
>
>  I'm a proponent of RDFa, but I actually see this particular behavior as a
> bug, not a feature. Because the RDFa is hidden, you can easily copy text
> from the Web and paste it somewhere where the hidden tags will make
> incorrect assertions.
>
>  For instance, when I copy and paste a co-worker's name into a page on my
> Web site, it would copy the foaf:name property. The foaf:name property
> worked well on my coworkers Web site, where the foaf:name took the URI
> defined in the parent element as it's subject. However, when I place it in
> an arbitrary position on my page, it will then take another element for it's
> subject... for instance, it might be pasted into a div about me, in which
> case it would assert that my coworker's name is also my name.
>
>  I'd be interested to hear what other's think about this.
>
>  -Lin
>
>
> With the data/metadata structure, shouldn't be a problem.  Additionally,
> there are things that both the browser could do on the copy or that the page
> could do via Javascript.  You may have noticed that a number of newsy
> websites now automatically insert a source / copyright / link before text
> that you've copied from a web page.  That could be used to pull the proper
> context into the copied data/metadata region.
>
> I recently implemented an XML DOM parser with an embedded SAX engine.
> Besides simplifying and fixing the DOM API, and optimizing it for Java, one
> feature that I needed was to be able to get the XML for any node at any
> time.  In addition to doing this efficiently, the library prepends an XML
> decl that defines all of the namespace prefixes used so that the fragment is
> fully parsable XML.
>
> sdw
>
>


-- 
Lin Clark
DERI, NUI Galway <http://www.deri.ie/>

lin-clark.com
twitter.com/linclark