[whatwg] HTML4's profile="" attribute's absence in HTML5

[Julian Reschke]

Ian Hickson wrote:
> Summary: profile="" doesn't work in practice so we have dropped it. We 
> haven't replaced it with anything since there isn't really a problem to 
> solve -- conflicts don't occur in practice, as Microformat names are 
> picked to be rather unique and recognisable. The market takes care of 
> problems like this without the need for namespace syntax.
> ...

I disagree.

1) Conflicts *do* occur, as soon as you consider extensions that happen 
outside the microformats process (and that process seems to exclude 
private extensions, such as for intranet applications).

2) As a matter of fact, <http://microformats.org/wiki/profile-uris> states

"In hcalendar-issues, it is ACCEPTED that each microformat should have a 
profile URI, like the XFN profile (http://gmpg.org/xfn/11)."

So it seems you are in disagreement with the microformats community as well.

That being said; I agree that the profile attribute is not a good 
solution, as it is of limited use only. Thus, instead of removing it we 
should think about fixing it, or using something that works instead 
(RDFa comes to mind).

BR, Julian