[whatwg] Ghosts from the past and the semantic Web

[Kristof Zelechovski]

Rather meta-property than metadata-property, otherwise seems quite
reasonable.
Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: whatwg-bounces at lists.whatwg.org
[mailto:whatwg-bounces at lists.whatwg.org] On Behalf Of Greg Houston
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2008 5:29 PM
To: Shannon
Cc: Ben Adida; whatwg at lists.whatwg.org; Eduard Pascual
Subject: Re: [whatwg] Ghosts from the past and the semantic Web

On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 3:31 AM, Shannon <shannon at arc.net.au> wrote:
> I think you see the problem to be solved as "RDF-in-HTML". I would prefer
> the problem defined as "Metadata-in-HTML".

It seems to me that everything they want to do could be done with the
data attribute except that attribute is meant to be private, which
could mean an assortment of things. John Resig mentioned it is private
in the sense that it does not effect layout or presentation, but it
could also be private in the sense that I don't have to worry about
someone else using any of my data names, e.g., I can use data-title,
data-blue, data-atari, and not worry about conflicts with anyone else.

Data is private, metadata is not. It seems like a metadata attribute
could be pretty much exactly like the data attribute but with
namespacing.

Then there is only one reserved metadata name and that is
metadata-namespace. The vocabulary file could be written in XML or
some language that doesn't exist yet. It tells you what it is in it's
doctype. What they want to add as HTML attributes instead they would
have to further define in their vocabulary (if they don't already),
e.g., typeof, about, property and so forth. They can make a thousand
new metadata attributes if they want, they just have to define them in
their vocabulary file.

<div id="Sarah"
	metadata-namespace="foo:http://mysite.com/foo/"
	metadata-foo="instanceof:Person;about:Sarah">
	<p><span metadata-foo="property:name">Sarah Foo</span></p>
	<p><span metadata-foo="property:job:title">CEO</span></p>
	<p><span metadata-foo="property:job:salary">$120,000</span></p>
	<p><span metadata-foo="property:age">32</span></p>
	<h3>Likes:</h3>		
	<ul metadata-foo="property:likes;rel:whatever;typeof:whatever">
		<li>chocolate</li>
		<li>stars</li>
		<li>green</li>
	</ul>				
</div>