For a long time -- it feels like much longer than the RDFa Plugin for WordPress tech challenge has been on the wiki (28 months) -- the idea that there should be such a thing has been around. I recall multiple Summer of Code applications proposing to tackle the problem. However, it is a really hard UI problem.

I'm really happy to see the announcement of RDFaCE, which does most of the hard work.

Without reading any documentation or watching their screencast (still haven't watched it, no idea if it is any good!) I was able to add a cc:attributionName annotation specific to the image in their demo on my first try:

  • select the photographer name, insert cc:attributionName annotation with literal value already in the text. RDFaCE seems to already know the correct cc: namespace mapping.
  • select content around photo, set subject to photo URL
  • verify that triples produced are correct

Granted I more or less know what I'm doing. But, so do lots of other people. Contrary to some impressions, annotating stuff on the web with name-value pairs ("stuff" is the subject in the "triple") is hardly brain-twisting.

I look forward to seeing RDFaCE bundled in a WordPress plugin with some awareness of the WordPress media manager, and using on this very blog.

TinyMCE is the free software rich text editor used in lots of projects in addition to WordPress, so this is a great step forward!