I've been (slowly) working on the bibliographic citation format for a while now. Brian Suda and I had a lengthy discussion a while back, and Edward V. and I have had some preliminary discussions.
--- Tantek �elik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > In addition, as way of "moving forward", it would be great to see > some > analysis of the implied schemas illustrated by the examples in the > current > cite-examples page: > > http://microformats.org/wiki/cite-examples After I added those examples to the wiki, I did a quick analysis[1] -- in a nutshell patterns for titles include: * id="title" class="producttitle" * class="title" * id="lblTitle" class="book_headline block" * table cell, no mark up * h1 * h2 I also posted my thoughts on starting NOT with a full bibliographic microformat, since that tends to get overly complicated quickly, but rather to start with a title design pattern. My thoughts were lengthy, so instead of sending them to the list[2], I linked to them on my blog[3]. Perhaps that resulted in less discussion. At any rate, my concern now is with the title issue. I see that under hAtom it was determined that class="title" couldn't be reused because it was already in use by hCard. While I understand the idea behind not reusing names, this practice seems to have 2 problems: 1) long-term complexity, 2) runs counter to microformats principles. Keeping things simple by not reusing names has its merit. However, as we build more microformats I think we run the risk of needing to invent non-intuitive class names because the most appropriate one is already taken. It looks like class="title" for hAtom was solvable by using an alternate name, but now that is taken away from the next format. As for the principles, we are suppose to "pave the cowpaths". The few examples I've placed in the wiki break out to about 60/40 that use "title" (or some derivative) to refer to a book title. Furthermore, look at virtually any card catalog, amazon.com or other book service and you will find search criteria for "title". Also, look at the work Edward has done for the Ann Arbor District Library XML feed.[4] I would say that this path is pretty well worn. (And yes, I admit this blinds/biases me a bit to seeing alternatives, but I'm trying to be open to reasonable suggestions.) As for any confusion re-used names may cause parsers/application, I think that is secondary to easy of use by people. At least when I think about People First, Machines Second, I think in terms not only of human readable, but also easy-of-use by people. Computers are here to do the complicated bits for us and should be able to figure out if they are reading an hCard or a bibliographic citation. (Easy for me to say since I don't write apps.) I hope all this makes sense -- it's getting late and I feel like I'm rambling. At any rate, I hope we can have some good, productive discussions about a bibliographic format and get this thing moving. -Tim White tjameswhite.com/blog [1] http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2005-December/002519.html [2] http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2005-December/002447.html [3] http://www.tjameswhite.com/blog/archives/2005/12/microformat-design-pattern/ [4] http://microformats.org/wiki/cite-formats __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ microformats-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
