Re: microformats, profiles, and taking back rel/class names [standardizedFieldValues-51]

On 7/16/07, Harry Halpin <hhalpin@ibiblio.org> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 16 Jul 2007, Mark Baker wrote:
> > On 7/16/07, Harry Halpin <hhalpin@ibiblio.org> wrote:
> >> If @profile is lost, and if @rel and @class are given a single
> >> centralized repository with *no* way to extend HTML in a principled
> >> manner, you are breaking decentralization of the Web, period.
> >
> > The Web currently uses several registries; DNS, media types, various
> > HTTP parameters (methods, response codes, etc..), URI schemes.
>
> *None* of the above options allow you to do what @profile does, i.e.
> address the problem of interpretation of attribute values of @class and
> @rel in HTML. Since people are *already* using these attributes in a
> decentralized way (re microformats) and that seems to have no sign of
> stopping, Web Architecture owes these people a way of doing it in
> a principled manner  that uses the "Follow-Your-Nose" principle - and
> luckily, HTML 4 and XHTML  1 give us this mechanism. Thus, deprecating
> @profile/@rel in HTML 5 is not only not appropriate, it's broken.

"profile" was a fine idea, but I think the opportunity to use it to
affect the scope of class (or rel or ...) values has long passed.  Far
too much software has been deployed which interprets these names
without any knowledge of "profile" scoping (e.g. CSS selectors).

If you really want these names grounded in URI space, I think the only
way forward is to bypass these legacy issues by starting from scratch
with new attributes.

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.         http://www.markbaker.ca
Coactus; Web-inspired integration strategies  http://www.coactus.com

Received on Tuesday, 17 July 2007 02:58:35 UTC