¶ PS: Content and Context · 25 January 2006 essay/tech
[Postscript to Content and Presentation Are 3...]
Arguably the most fundamental specific semantic failing in the current HTML approach to information communication is that it does not effectively distinguish between a) content unique to the individual information node represented by the page URL, and b) navigation and context appearing on the same web page but belonging conceptually to a higher containing node. Thus, most obviously, indexers have no way to reliably attribute text-matches or links to the correct node. Less obviously, perhaps, this makes it difficult for reading software to easily recognize that two URLs present the same content in different contexts, which is currently the shape of quite a bit of content abuse, or different content in the same context, which at this point is probably the shape of most legitimate web information. The real solution still lies in separating content structure and presentation structure, but a microformat-style approach might help a lot in the interim.
PPS: There is also currently no good method for separating the content and context components of a URL, either, meaning there is often no user-visible URI for the content node itself. This may be moot most of the time in the new world, since content will either have a context imposed upon it or will invoke its own default context. But standardizing URL formats in the short-term may be even harder than standardizing class-based pseudo-semantics...
Arguably the most fundamental specific semantic failing in the current HTML approach to information communication is that it does not effectively distinguish between a) content unique to the individual information node represented by the page URL, and b) navigation and context appearing on the same web page but belonging conceptually to a higher containing node. Thus, most obviously, indexers have no way to reliably attribute text-matches or links to the correct node. Less obviously, perhaps, this makes it difficult for reading software to easily recognize that two URLs present the same content in different contexts, which is currently the shape of quite a bit of content abuse, or different content in the same context, which at this point is probably the shape of most legitimate web information. The real solution still lies in separating content structure and presentation structure, but a microformat-style approach might help a lot in the interim.
PPS: There is also currently no good method for separating the content and context components of a URL, either, meaning there is often no user-visible URI for the content node itself. This may be moot most of the time in the new world, since content will either have a context imposed upon it or will invoke its own default context. But standardizing URL formats in the short-term may be even harder than standardizing class-based pseudo-semantics...