Whohoo! A point of real debate! Well, as I did when we first spoke months ago, I firmly disagree, and over time, I think you will be proven wrong. There's simply no point in having multiple instantiations of the same data in a text-based format (I'm exempting relational databases).
In any case -- I know where you're coming from and I appreciate you making a public statement about your position. This will allow us to finally have this conversation out in daylight. Your point has been that straight XML is easier to parse than XHTML -- which could include linked CSS for use in presentation, or JS to add/modify behavior. Furthermore, as new chat programs emerge, the ability to move data between them in a format that works in *any browser* seems like an investment in the future, as opposed to the present and recent past. Lastly, the unknown uses and mashability of XHTML is one of the most important elements of using XHTML as opposed to custom XML. These are a few of the basic assumptions that I work under. I would be very happy if you would discount them, one at a time. ;) Chris On 10/29/06, Colin Barrett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Particularly, I'm going to be talking about "hChat". Personally, I see the primary use case of a chat microformat to be for displaying of chat contents in a live (or semi-live) way. There are quite a few examples of this in the wild -- web-based IM clients like Meebo, and Adium and Kopete's message view, both of which are HTML based. Contrarily, most data formats are not HTML based (XML based, usually), or if they are, do not use modern HTML (i.e. AOL's HTML log format). I think the chat group should alter its focus to providing ways to semantically talk about the structure of a chat and a particular message entry. One of the most obvious benefits in this area is much better clipboard support -- copying things out of Meebo and Adium/ Kopete's HTML view usually results in an un-useful mess. Another important use case, that I think there has been some research towards already, is "snippets". That is, small snippets of an IM conversation in a blog post. This, conveniently, goes along with my earlier point about copy-paste. Just a couple of other points that have been percolating: - the use of hCard to mark up people's names - Time zone information is important -- particularly wrt. time time zone of the sender and the time zone of the receiver. This email has been a long time coming -- I've waited for a couple of months, just lurking and trying to understand the process. Should people agree that this is the direction research should go, I'll start working on getting links on the wiki to examples of documentations of chat representations. I think that the idea of chat *logging* is a well-solved problem by XML and microformats shouldn't be butting their heads in -- especially since most of the time full logs aren't available on the web (the uF log bot being a notable, and interesting, exception). In the interest of full disclosure: I'm one of the developers of Adium -- we're looking into improving our message view, and copy/paste has been something that's plagued us for a while. I'm also one of the primary authors of an XML based log format that's been adopted by Adium, Gaim and Kopete. -- Colin Barrett Developer, Adium http://adiumx.com _______________________________________________ microformats-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
-- Chris Messina Citizen Provocateur & Open Source Ambassador-at-Large Work: http://citizenagency.com Blog: http://factoryjoe.com/blog Cell: 412 225-1051 Skype: factoryjoe This email is: [ ] bloggable [X] ask first [ ] private _______________________________________________ microformats-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
