Hi, I've recently added (or tried to add) DC-HTML metadata to a
site of mine. I'm a big believer in the principle of "if you didn't
test it, it doesn't work", so I'd like to actually have a chance to
validate, and test my interoperability. Two example pages can be found at
http://ny-pictures.com/nyc/photo/topic/10421/Unisphere
and
http://ny-pictures.com/nyc/photo/picture/49470/unisphere_build_1964_sculpture_steel_approve
Is there a DC-HTML validator that I can use to (i) check that I'm
doing it right, and (ii) will explain to me what I'm doing wrong if I'm
doing it wrong.
On another note, I've noticed that there's some move towards using
RDFa as the official format for DC metadata. I have to admit that I
find that disturbing; I really fear that that's a decision that could
set back interoperability by 5-10 years.
There's really two troubles I see with RDFa. (i) the close tie to
XHTML (which, practically, doesn't exist in the wild; a few years
back there was a blog entry that advocated that browsers should refuse
to render invalid documents served with an XHTML doctype -- a visitor to
the blog immediately discovered that that posting was an invalid XHTML
document!) and (ii) a highly complex specification that closely
intertwines presentation and content.
In my mind, a usable standard has to be something that can be
distilled into step-by-step specific steps. I get the feeling that the
RDFa specification will (a) cause most web publishers to decide
publishing better metadata isn't worth the trouble, and (b) result in
the few brave ones doing it incorrectly.
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