Mike Schinkel wrote:
Thanks for the clarification.
Further questions (and forgive me if I missed any of this before I joined):
Currency symbol identification
This is a naïve question: Doesn't the ISO 4217 code *imply* a symbol? It
appears so here: http://www.xe.com/symbols.htm Doesn't including this in
the microformat create redundancy?
It's not just about identifying which symbol represents the currency,
but also which currency that symbol represents.
Alternately, can't the symbols be extracted as not being alphanumeric
characters?
For a program to do so, it would have to be aware of every single
alphanumeric character in Unicode. That does not just include
[A-Za-z0-9]. It might be easier to do the reverse and know of every
character that isn't a known currency symbol, but then even that list of
symbols is missing some.
e.g.
* U+FE69 ﹩ (Small Dollar Sign)
* U+FF04 ＄ (Fullwidth Dollar Sign)
* U+FFE5 ￥ (Fullwidth Yen Sign)
* etc.
It's much easier for the author to explicitly state which character(s)
represent the symbol, than implementing heuristics to guess.
Broader Question:
Isn't the idea behind Microformats to be as consise, cohesive, and single
purposed as possible? If so, wouldn't that argue for "combination with
units (ex. $34 per gallon, $2 per miles)" being out of scope and begging the
need for a microformat that allows unit designation, i.e. hUnits?
Yes. Tackling the problem of identifying specific units under the
currency format is far too complicated when you consider the sheer
number of units there are, including SI units, Imperial units and US
customary units, used for various quantities including number of units,
length, mass, time, volume, area, energy, etc.
However, the format could make provisions for some form of quantity,
even if it doesn't explicitly define what such quantities are.
e.g. price per Litre:
<span class="money">
<abbr class="currency unit" title="AUD">$</abbr>1.23
<span class="quantity">L</span>
</span>
Or for each unit:
<span class="money">
<abbr class="unit">$</abbr>4.95
<span class="quantity">each</span>
</span>
That way, if and when a microformat for units of measurement is
introduced, that could easily be expanded to the following. e.g.
<span class="quantity si-unit">L</span>
My last thought on the subject, is why are we using full names for currency
and amount instead of "cur" and "amt" to minimize bloat when hCard uses
names like "fn?"
One of the problems I have with hCard is that those abbreviated class
names are difficult to comprehend and remember. e.g. It's easy to get
confused about what 'fn' means, since it could easily stand for family
name, though it doesn't. (I'm not exactly sure what it stands for,
though I assume it means "formatted name" even though it's not
explicitly stated as such in the vCard RFC)
Abbreviations can be good in many cases, but you have to be careful not
to introduce too much confusion or ambiguity for authors.
--
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/
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