[whatwg] RDFa Basics Video (8 minutes)

[Toby A Inkster]

On 27 Aug 2008, at 17:43, Kristof Zelechovski wrote:

> Well, that sounds better.  What makes me uneasy is that objects are  
> indeed
> taken from the text but predicates are in the attribute values and  
> therefore
> they must be duplicated to make a sentence.


Well, this works the same way Microformats work. You don't have:

   <span class="property-value">
     <span class="property">tel</span>
     <span class="value">01632 790 123</span>
   </span>

Instead, you have:

   Whatever label the author wants:
   <span class="tel">01632 790 123</span>

Putting the property names in human-readable text is not very nice  
for internationalisation. "Tel" might not be understood very easily  
on, say, a Korean web page.

That having been said, it *is* possible to use a concept called  
"reification" to directly pick up on properties/relationships which  
are expressed in the text of the document. It's not pretty though:

   <div typeof="rdf:Statement">
     <span rel="rdf:subject" resource="#jane">
       <span property="foaf:name">Jane</span>
     </span>
     <span rel="rdf:predicate">
       <span property="rdfs:label">loves</span>
     </span>
     <span rel="rdf:object" resource="#mac">
       <span property="foaf:name">Mac</span>
     </span>
   </div>

-- 
Toby A Inkster
<mailto:mail at tobyinkster.co.uk>
<http://tobyinkster.co.uk>