[whatwg] Annotating structured data that HTML has no semanticsfor
Shelley Powers
shelleyp at burningbird.net
Fri May 15 05:11:52 PDT 2009
Kristof Zelechovski wrote:
> I do not think anybody in WHATWG hates the CURIE tool; however, the
> following problems have been put forward:
>
> Copy-Paste
> The CURIE mechanism is considered inconvenient because is not
> copy-paste-resilient, and the associated risk is that semantic elements
> would randomly change their meaning.
>
Well, no, the elements won't randomly change their meaning. The only
risk is copying and pasting them into a document that doesn't provide
namespace definitions for the prefixes. Are you thinking that someone
will be using different namespaces but the same prefix? Come on -- do
you really think that will happen?
How big a risk is this? I would actually say it's minor. Probably no
more of a risk than happened with people making copies of other web page
content, and cutting off the end, or forgetting to change all the values
once copied.
People can copy and paste JavaScript that references elements with
certain identifiers. If those aren't used correctly, the application
will also fail. Therefore we should not allow copying and pasting of
script? How about CSS, then. Can't copy and paste CSS, because again
this action is dependent on another and equal action either in a
separate document, or elsewhere in the page.
There is no such thing as risk free copy and paste. And frankly, few
people will be doing copying and pasting. Most metadata will probably be
added either as part of an underlying tool, like Drupal, or using
modules and plug-ins that come with documentation, or insert what's
needed dynamically.
This isn't HTML 3.0 times any more.
> 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.
>
> Chris
>
>
>
>
>
Well, now, have you tried to look up one of the reversed DNS values yet?
I don't believe that link rot was ever really considered an issue with
RDFa.
Shelley
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