{"id":39,"date":"2008-03-15T21:54:02","date_gmt":"2008-03-16T01:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/2008\/03\/yahoo-bibleref-and-rdfa\/"},"modified":"2008-03-15T21:54:02","modified_gmt":"2008-03-16T01:54:02","slug":"yahoo-bibleref-and-rdfa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/2008\/03\/yahoo-bibleref-and-rdfa\/","title":{"rendered":"Yahoo!, Bibleref, and RDFa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yahoo! last week announced that it\u2019s going to start indexing semantic data<\/a>, including support for certain microformats.<\/p>\n

Bibleref<\/a> isn\u2019t one of those microformats. Should Bibleref proponents lobby Yahoo! to index Bibleref, or should Bibleref change its syntax to be compatible with RDFa or another semantic web standard?<\/p>\n

Background<\/h3>\n

Earlier, Sim.plified.com noted a Yahoo! semantic-web announcement and mused about the possibility of using the Yahoo! engine for Bibleref<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Then David Peterson, author of a Sitepoint article<\/a> about the earlier Yahoo! announcement, wrote a comment that encapsulates the chicken\/egg problem inherent in getting a new microformat off the ground:<\/p>\n

Currently the search engine only indexes 3 microformats (hCard, hCalendar, hReview). So if you started indexing your hBible [i.e., Bibleref] it wouldn’t pick it up.<\/p>\n

The problem with microformats is that each time a new one is created the search indexer needs to develop a custom extractor to make sense of your microformat. That is why Yahoo microsearch is only indexing 3 of the most popular format.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So what should Bibleref\u2019s proponents do? It\u2019s possible we could convince Yahoo! to index Bibleref, giving it the traction it needs to take off. However, I wouldn\u2019t necessarily expect Yahoo! to do a good job understanding the data, in part because of the looseness of the standard (which I see as a good thing). And if Yahoo! doesn\u2019t understand it well, then search results based on Bibleref won\u2019t be very high quality. But a lot depends on how Yahoo! exposes the data. (And they may not even want to index Bibleref.)<\/p>\n

RDFa<\/h3>\n

Another possibility is to change Bibleref to be compatible with RDFa<\/a>, an emerging standard that Yahoo! does understand. The RDFa syntax fits Bibleref well:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. <a property="br:ref" href="#">John 3:16-17<\/a><\/code><\/li>\n
  2. <span property="br:ref" content="John 3:16-17">God loves us<\/span><\/code><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Compare to standard Bibleref markup:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. <a class="bibleref" href="#">John 3:16-17<\/a><\/code><\/li>\n
    2. <cite class="bibleref" title="John 3:16-17">God loves us<\/cite><\/code><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      As you can see, the markup is similar. However, it still has some problems: neither example provides an unambiguous machine-readable representation that would allow an unspecialized search engine like Yahoo! to extract meaning.<\/p>\n

      I\u2019m not entirely sure whether that\u2019s a problem in either the current or RDFa flavors of Bibleref. Yahoo! plans to release tools to let developers build on semantic search data, so Yahoo!\u2019s inability to understand something may not necessarily matter. (Without enforcing a formal representation, such as an OSIS<\/a> identifier, one Bible passage can have any number of representations\u2014the \u201cJohn 3:16\u201d vs. \u201cJn 3.16\u201d problem.) It\u2019s too early to tell.<\/p>\n

      The second example, with an explicit content<\/code> attribute, can provide a formal, machine-readable representation of a Bible reference (like an OSIS identifier). But providing one is a lot more work for software that lets people write documents using Bibleref\u2014it needs to understand references and create such identifiers. But would retaining the looseness of the current Bibleref standard defeat the purpose of using RDF, which thrives on strict interoperability?<\/p>\n

      Again, I don\u2019t know. A lot depends on the tools and API that Yahoo! is making available.<\/p>\n

      But the central question is whether Bibleref syntax should move to be compatible with RDFa. The advantage is automatic pickup by new semantic search engines. The disadvantages are the syntax change and increased complexity (including DOCTYPE and namespace changes that I haven\u2019t discussed here). It may be too early to tell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Yahoo! last week announced that it\u2019s going to start indexing semantic data, including support for certain microformats. Bibleref isn\u2019t one of those microformats. Should Bibleref proponents lobby Yahoo! to index Bibleref, or should Bibleref change its syntax to be compatible with RDFa or another semantic web standard? Background Earlier, Sim.plified.com noted a Yahoo! semantic-web announcement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}