Re: Handling of @src (ISSUE-107)

Hi Ivan,

On the implications of change, the only one I can think of would be
sites adding licensing information about images directly to the <img>
element. I had thought that Flickr was using this technique but I've
just checked and it doesn't seem to be the case. So my guess is that
you're probably safe.

(And if your question is more about sites that I have deployed, then
we're not using @src in this way on LevelBusiness so it wouldn't be a
problem for me.)

All the best,

Mark


On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 9:24 AM, Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org> wrote:
> (Ben, Mark, Jay, you will see below why you were explicitly solicited...)
>
> There is an open ISSUE[1] on the table of the RDFWA WG on RDFa on the exact semantics of @src.
>
> At present, @src behaves like @about. What this means that it is possible to write
>
> <img src="bla" property="prop" content="something"/>
>
> Because the content model of HTML does not allow for any children for <img>, this is the only way to do this without repeating the URI in @src somewhere.
>
> However, it turns out that this behaviour seems to be fairly unnatural to many, users seem to expect that @src behaves like @href, ie, it sets the object. Gregg (and others I believe) have reported that a major source of mistakes in using RDFa is the pattern
>
> <img rel="prop" src="bla"/>
>
> expecting to see something like
>
> <> <prop> <bla> .
>
> which of course will not happen. Put it another way, the design pattern
>
> <div rel="prop"><img src="bla"/></div>
>
> should be used all over the place and people do not really like that...
>
> So the issue recorded in ISSUE-107[1] is to change the behaviour of @src, ie, to make its semantics identical to @href/@resource.
>
> The WG has discussed this on its past telco[2] and, although people agreed that the current design was not optimal, it was not clear how to go ahead. Indeed, a change in RDFa 1.1 would lead to a backward incompatibility. Putting aside the charter issue, the real question is whether this would hurt existing deployment or whether the effect would be minimal. There was a straw poll at the meeting that was not unanimous, but with a majority accepting the change, but it was clear that this is something where we need more feedback. (Hence the explicit addressing of this mail to Jay, Ben, and Mark...)
>
> So, feedbacks please? I think the question we should concentrate on: would such a backward compatible change hurt existing deployments in a really significant manner?
>
> Thanks
>
> Ivan
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/track/issues/107
> [2] http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/meetings/2011-09-08#src_attribute__2c__ISSUE__2d_107
> ----
> Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
> Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
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>
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>

Received on Saturday, 10 September 2011 12:10:26 UTC