[whatwg] Annotating structured data that HTML has no semantics for. Hixie’s proposal for microdata, a simplified RDFa to be included in the HTML5 spec which allows self-contained communities to invent their own microformat-style spec and use it to add structured semantics to their markup. Whether or not you like the proposal itself the explanation is a fascinating read.
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Looks like Hixie suffers from the NIH syndrome. Although you’d say that for a W3C working group, ‘here’ would still include a different W3C group.
Either way, I’m glad he adopts the RDFa syntax, but the move from RDF to a new HTML-only Java-style ‘namespacing’ is just terribly pointless. Not to mention that it alienates the entire RDF community and disregards all the effort put in bringing RDF technologies to maturity. Did I mention it was pointless?
But I guess it was to be expected, given Hixie’s allergy for basically everything that ever came out of the W3C. Also nice that his <em>proposal</em> appears right in the specification working draft, as usual, bringing with it the impression that it is now there and being forced upon us.
He already succeeded in shaking off Shelley, let’s hope there are still RDF proponents left that are willing to put the effort in stopping this train.
Laurens Holst - 11th May 2009 16:31 - #
Laurens: URIs are still supported as identifiers, and the spec defines exactly how you convert an HTML document (including microdata) to RDF.
I tried to stick as closely as possible to RDFa without including the serious problems in RDFa.
How is that NIH?
Ian Hickson - 11th May 2009 23:40 - #
Full URIs are way too verbose, without the ability to shorten them with prefixes.
Due to this, reusing terms from an existing ontology is penalised in favour of just inventing your own ‘xhmtl/custom#’ relation. This is the opposite of what is desirable.
It will make RDF a second-class citizen in favour of some newly-to-be-invented ‘microdata ontologies’. These will be created with no regard to RDF and in a namespace that is not controlled by the ontology authors.
It is NIH because you take a spec that has been discussed at length, and make changes at your bidding to carefully weed out any possibility of RDF being a viable application of the technology. If you have such strong opinions, you should have partaken in the RDFa discussions as it was being developed.
Instead you try to force your ideas upon us by putting it in HTML5. Wasn’t that what Internet Explorer was accused of? Embrace and extend? (And preferably incompatibly break things, too.)
Laurens Holst - 12th May 2009 13:22 - #