[whatwg] Ghosts from the past and the semantic Web

[Ben Adida]

Kristof Zelechovski wrote:
> I am not opposing local metadata; I have already explained you can use the
> SCRIPT element for the purpose.  I only say that metadata should not be
> inside content they describe in order to avoid circularity.  This is a
> philosophical objection, not a technical one.

The SCRIPT element does *not* match our needs, because it does not allow
us to reuse rendered content as structured data, unless we are forced to
rely on JavaScript, which is a non-starter and is far more complicated
than what we're proposing.

We also do *not* want to have to rely on server pre-processing. Sure,
people can use server templates and such if they want, but it should not
be a requirement. Plain HTML should be just fine.

Your argument on circularity is wrong, in my opinion. The potential for
circularity exists in the English (or any other) language, as I've
explained in a previous email. RDFa only makes human-readable statements
machine-readable.

Does that mean you can make non-sensical statements? Absolutely. Just
like you can in plain English.

That's not a bug, that's just something we live with in language.

-Ben