Re: HTML5 ISSUE-120 rdfa-prefixes : Proposal to use RDFa according to spec

I endorse Danny Ayers' proposal that HTML/HTML5 use RDFa as found in
the RDFa  specification [1].

I particularly note that the user study and anecdotal evidence that
are an important part of Ian Hickson's objections represent a very
small sample. For my part, I find the flexibility and convenience
offered by prefixes to be an essential factor in my choice to use the
standard. Given that Ian's objections are so anecdotal, I'm confident
that the personal perspective of end user's like myself will have
equal effect in the conversation.

 -Sebastian

 http://sebastianheath.com

 [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-syntax/

On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 4:35 AM, Danny Ayers <danny.ayers@gmail.com> wrote:
> ISSUE-120
> Current Status [1,2] :
>>   We a single change proposal to simplify the HTML+RDFa specification
>>   by removing prefixes.
>> - We have another change proposal to clarify how prefixes work and
>>   explain that they are optional.
>
> I'd like to propose that HTML/HTML5 uses RDFa as found in the RDFa
> specification [3]. This includes the use of namespace prefixes.
>
> I'll counter the argument for changing the spec in regards to
> namespace prefixes given (by Hixie) on the WHATWG Wiki [4]
> (statistical evidence is my trump card), and then also offer a
> sub-proposal that may help alleviate the perceived problems (but isn't
> tied to the main proposal).
>
> The Change Proposal summary (regarding namespace prefixes) is:
> Simplify the specification by removing features that are documented to
> be confusing to users.
>
> First, this change is unnecessary as the use of namespace prefixes is
> optional (full URIs can be used inline instead). If this feature is
> actually confusing to users then confusion may be avoided by only
> providing guidance in the HTML documentation on the use of RDFa
> without prefixes. If the facility coverage is adequate, then the user
> won't have any need to consult the RDFa spec for the namespace
> prefixes-based alternative.
>
> Second, the arguments given in the Change Proposal that support for
> namespace prefixes is confusing are mostly anecdotal - i.e. person A,
> B and C say it's confusing. (Given the size of the Web, such material
> isn't in short supply on any issue you wish to choose - given a little
> time with a search engine, arguments that the British Queen is an
> alien lizard can be amassed). Additionally no real distinction is made
> between issues faced by end-user publishers and tool developers. This
> is significant because the only time full knowledge of the namespace
> prefix mechanism is essential is when developers wish to write a
> parser - this seems something of a minority activity.
>
> Statistical evidence [5] would suggest that in reality the existence
> of the option to use namespace prefixes* isn't a barrier to widespread
> deployment of RDFa: "The data shows that the usage of RDFa has
> increased 510% between March, 2009 and October, 2010, from 0.6% of
> webpages to 3.6% of webpages (or 430 million webpages in our sample of
> 12 billion)".
>
> (* It's possible that none of the pages analysed actually used
> namespace prefixes, but that would still mean that their appearance in
> the specs doesn't compromise the use of RDFa as-is)
>
> A usability study is quoted, but as an internal Google study which was
> flawed in design and limited in scope, I don't believe this can be
> considered credible evidence.
> (Personally my biggest issue there was that there were only 7
> participants, but Hixie has assured me that conclusions can reasonably
> be drawn from such small numbers of participants. On the blog it
> states "people really don't have any problems dealing with URLs as
> property names" - but as also stated there, this wasn't something that
> the study was designed to test. A casual observation is not evidence.
> There are also the issues mentioned in comments on the WHATWG blog [6]
> : "Videos can’t be viewed out of Google. Bias on the part of the
> creators of the study. Lack of outside involvement. No information
> about where the people taking the study are employed. Lack of
> diversity of demographics. Lack of proper, and neutral, oversight.
> Interpretation by person or persons without proper background, and
> neutrality. Single study, only.")
>
> ---
>
> So onto a sub-proposal: a way of removing the need for the widespread
> use of namespaces, and allow the use of short names rather than URIs
> for common terms, would be to put such terms in the HTML namespace. In
> other words, make a registry of terms along the same lines as already
> used for common rel="" attributes. Of course such a registry could
> never completely reflect the range of terms found in the wild, but it
> does seem likely that in the near term at least, HTML developers are
> most likely to predominantly use a limited range of terms, which could
> be catered for in the HTML namespace.
>
> This is akin to the approach taken by Google in their "Rich Snippets":
> common terms are placed in a single namespace. As noted elsewhere, the
> single-namespace approach is "hobbled" [7] and Google's particular
> implemention is severely flawed [8] (the main flaw is
> self-documenting, see http://rdf.data-vocabulary.org/name). But such
> issues could be to some extent alleviated by providing references to
> existing deployed vocabularies in the HTML namespace document, along
> the lines of:
>
> html:Person rdfs:subClassOf foaf:Person, vCard:Person, google:Person ...
>
> (Probably done in RDFa)
>
> Work would be needed in selecting suitable terms (the microformats
> community could probably help there) and care taken in aligning them
> appropriately with existing terms (i.e. where and in which direction
> to use rdfs:subClassOf/rdfs:subPropertyOf,
> owl:equivalentClass/owl:equivalentProperty etc).
>
> Were this approach taken, I'd suggest it was used alongside including
> RDFa as-is. As mentioned above, if the documentation guides the user
> towards the syntactically simpler approach, any potential confusion
> may be minimised.
>
> Cheers,
> Danny.
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/issues/120
> [2] http://dev.w3.org/html5/status/issue-status.html#ISSUE-120
> [3] http://www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-syntax/
> [4] http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Change_Proposal_for_ISSUE-120
> [5] http://tripletalk.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/rdfa-deployment-across-the-web/
> [6] http://blog.whatwg.org/usability-testing-html5
> [7] http://blog.iandavis.com/2009/05/13/googles-rdfa-a-damp-squib/
> [8] http://www.jenitennison.com/blog/node/104
>
> --
> http://danny.ayers.name
>
>

Received on Friday, 4 February 2011 13:16:07 UTC