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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal: switch to HTML 5

by Sergey Chernyshev-2 :: Rate this Message:

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 11:15 AM, Sergey

Chernyshev<sergey.chernyshev@...> wrote:

> I'm only considering the projects I was going to work on and can't talk for
> all the things MediaWiki team should have in mind - I was going to add
> support for RDFa (http://www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-syntax/) which currently is W3C
> Recomendation, but only for XHTML and even though HTML profiles (or whatever
> they are called) are in the works they are not ready yet.
>
> Switching to non-recomendation will mean that implementing RDFa in standard
> compliant form will have to be postponed for quite a while.

I'm pretty sure this will be resolved within a matter of months, one
way or another. Either Ian will cave and support RDFa, or RDFa will
support HTML 5 (at least in a usable draft form) without HTML 5's
explicit agreement, or microdata will gain support as wide as RDFa.
At worst, you can still use MW 1.15 while things are being worked out.
Or maybe we could provide a switch to allow HTML 5 or XHTML, but I'm
leery of that, since it negates most of the benefits.

I admit that I don't follow RDF and "semantic web" stuff too closely,
so I'm not very qualified to address this objection. I'm pretty sure
that RDFa support is not an issue for the overwhelming majority of our
users, however. On the other hand, improved <video> support and
better form handling for a significant percentage of our users are
examples of clear and concrete benefits from HTML 5.

I see your point - video is clearly more popular then RDFa and if you're willing to go off-standard to support it, it's might be a reasonable decision for a site like Wikipedia. Not sure what is the rush for that and why can't it wait till HTML 5 spec becomes a recommendation.

I'm not that familiar with HTML 5 support in modern browsers to state that there are going to be regressions with some other things, but it might be another thing to consider, although Wikipedia might be big enough to be a driving force in such decisions.

Is this actually a *practical* problem even for the very small number
of users who want to use RDFa? I mean, will RDFa really not work with
HTML 5 in practice, or will it work but it's not standardized?

Sorry, can't give you a definitive answer - CCing RDFa list for this.

Guys, will be happy if you provide where RDFa support stands here.

> As for commotion I mentioned, I believe there is at least tension between
> RDFa world and "Microdata" world that is being pushed along HTML 5 spec.

Yes, there definitely is tension there! Just not between HTML 5 and
XHTML 2 -- that's over, even if a few people might not have gotten the
message yet. I don't know what will happen with RDFa vs. microdata.
I find it unlikely that anyone will convince Ian to include RDFa at
this point with just arguments. But if it sees much wider adoption
than microdata, he'd probably include it.

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