[whatwg] Trying to work out the problems solved by RDFa

[Charles McCathieNevile]

On Sun, 04 Jan 2009 02:54:18 +1100, Håkon Wium Lie <howcome at opera.com>
wrote:

> Also sprach Dan Brickley:
>
>  > My main problem with the natural language processing option is that it
>  > feels too close to waiting for Artificial Intelligence. I'd rather  >  
> add 6 attributes to HTML and get on with life.
...
> Personally, I think the 'class' attribute may still be a more
> compelling option in a less-is-more way. It already exists and can
> easily be used for styling purposes. Styling is bait for authors to
> disclose semantics.

I agree that this is a clear first step - and microformats were developed
by paving a cowpath from authors who had done this on their own initiative.

I think the reason for adding the RDFa attributes is that there are cases
where the semantic richness offered by class is insufficient. The relevant
cases are where people are already dealing in rich formalised semantics,
not those where it is a battle to get people to provide any semantics at
all. I think there is a clear benefit in drawing these people to HTML5
rather than suggesting they go off into some different Web.

I used the pattern of adding semantics through class, a decade or so ago,
and in some cases it met my needs perfectly, but in others was
insufficient to enable re-use of the data directly from pages, and forced
me to adopt external systems for managing my data which in turn implied an
increased cost in management because I had to keep the data model clear
although I did not have a simple formalism to specify it at the time.

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
       je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk
http://my.opera.com/chaals       Try Opera: http://www.opera.com