[uf-discuss] Re: [uf-new] Mapping Microformats to RDFa

[Michael Smethurst]

On 13/10/07 10:36, "Tom Morris" <tom at tommorris.org> wrote:

> On 10/12/07, Manu Sporny <msporny at digitalbazaar.com> wrote:
>> Great! Where are they? Are the transformations only available as XSL
>> stylesheets? If so, they're not very useful as a quick-reference for
>> publishers... are they?
>> 
> 
> Brian is referring to the RDFa folks rewriting microformats in RDFa, which
> seems like a non-optimal route to take - it's much better to publish
> microformats in the microformat syntax, and then use the profile attribute to
> point GRDDL processors in the right direction. Publishing microformats as
> RDFa seems like a terrific way to ensure that only RDFa tools can read them.
> Follow current practice and all that... ;)

All fine if your intention is just to produce rdf (a noble thing in itself)

There seem to be 2 sets of criticism of this work:

1. It's not a definitive mapping to rdf-a - just a very reduced set of rdf-a
markup. But unless GRDDL does more than just glean then it too is only going
to produce a reduced set rdf representation. It's not going to take a
contact:fn and know it's a mo:MusicGroup or a mo:MusicArtist. So the same
limitations apply to Manu's work as apply to GRDDL - you can only glean
what's there

2. It duplicates work between ufs and rdf-a. Probably true but... As above I
don't think it's anyone's intention to map ufs to fully expressive rdf-a.
The work required by both publishers and consumers would be too much. Rather
it seems like an attempt to map the simple models of ufs onto the goodness
of rdf-a. So just rdf-a flavoured microformats (or nana-formats given the
flexibility of rdf - sorry). What it does buy us is namespaces and that,
imho, is a GOOD THING and missing from ufs

I am in no way criticising microformats and the work done here - it's all
really cool and works for 80% of users in 80% of cases. Adding namespaces
might just make it work for another 10%.

Apologies if I'm putting words/opinions in the mouth of Manu - not my
intention


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