On Dec 7, 2006, at 2:28 PM, Mike Schinkel wrote:
If it is not a scarce resource, please tell me what would happen if I decided to start marking up documents, as an example, using the class "directory" and "license", for purposes other than rel-directory and re-license?
The classes wouldn't cause any problems, but if you mean the "rel" attribute, that would cause parsers to do confusing things with the data. Then people would start complaining to the parser developers, and the parser developers would start ignoring those attributes unless they were accompanied by the appropriate profile headers. And then publishers would start using the appropriate profile headers to disambiguate their microformats. None of that is happening now because there's no (or very little) ambiguity now, so there's little incentive to pre-emptively disambiguate. But if ambiguity ever becomes a real problem, there's a solution in profile headers ready to be used.
The next question I expect is: what if you want to use both the microformats.org rel-license and your own conflicting rel-license in the same document? Well, you can't. Just like in natural language, if you want to start using symbols with meanings that conflict with the established standard, you need to be prepared to establish a new standard meaning. And the usefulness of your new meaning, rather than some central authority, will determine whether or not people use it in place of the alternative meaning.
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