[whatwg] Annotating structured data that HTML has no semanticsfor

[Tab Atkins Jr.]

On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 9:17 AM, Eduard Pascual <herenvardo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 1:44 PM, Kristof Zelechovski
>> Link rot
>>        CURIE definitions can only be looked up while the CURIE server is
>> providing them; the chance of the URL becoming broken is high for
>> home-brewed vocabularies.  While the vocabularies can be moved elsewhere, it
>> will not always be possible to create a redirect.
>
> Oh, and do reversed domains help at all with this? Ok, with CURIEs
> there is a (relatively small) chance for the CURIE to not be
> resolvable at a given time; reversed domains have a 100% chance to not
> be resolvable at any time: there is always, at least, ambiguity: does
> org.example.foo map to foo.example.org, example.org/foo, or
> example.org#foo? Even better: what if, under example.org we find a
> vocabulary at example.org/foo and another at foo.example.org? (Ok,
> that'd be quite unwise, although it might be a legitimate way to keep
> "deployed" and "test" versions of a vocabulary online at a time; but
> anyway CURIEs can cope with it, while reversed domains can't).
> Wherever there are links, there is a chance for broken links: that's
> part of the nature of links, and the evolving nature of the web. But,
> just because the chance of links being broken, would you deny the
> utility of elements such as <a> and <link>? Reversed domains don't
> face broken links because they are simply uncapable to link to
> anything.

Reversed domains aren't *meant* to link to anything.  They shouldn't
be parsed at all.  They're a uniquifier so that multiple vocabularies
can use the same terms without clashing or ambiguity.  The Microdata
proposal also allows normal urls, but they are similarly nothing more
than a uniquifier.

CURIEs, at least theoretically, *rely* on the prefix lookup.  After
all, how else can you tell that a given relation is really the same
as, say, foaf:name?  If the domain isn't available, the data will be
parsed incorrectly.  That's why link rot is an issue.

~TJ