I almost completely disagree with this. If people are actually
*using* Microformats as intended, there will be plenty of times when
the machine data will pass in front of the user (in their calendar
program for example) for verification. I do however, agree with the
following.
expressed in as little-encoded form as can be gotten away with.
I concur, but what is in dispute here is what "can be gotten away
with." The abbr-design-pattern has failed for machine data.
Copied the entire email below for context. Tantek, if you post this
to the wiki, please note it as opinion and give a link to the thread.
Marking this as fact would misrepresent the views of the Microformats
group as a whole.
On May 4, 2007, at 7:53 AM, Tantek Çelik wrote:
(apologies for top posting but this is in response to Al's entire
message,
not to any specific point in particular)
Al,
VERY well written. That's perhaps the clearest explanation I have
seen of
why it is important to have visible information, even somewhat visible
rather than invisible.
May I quote what you wrote in part or in full on microformats wiki?
Thanks,
Tantek
On 5/3/07 6:18 PM, "Al Gilman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
At 12:24 AM +0100 4 05 2007, Patrick H. Lauke wrote:
Tantek Çelik wrote:
2. Keep both copies of the data at least somewhat visible to
humans so that
at least *some* human eyes/ears can easily inspect both copies
and ensure
that they have not diverged.
For the sake of argument, though: assuming that those human
eyes/ears use a microformat-consuming tool/extension/etc, this can
still happen. If I have a page with, say, contact details marked as
a hcard, and human users export it to Outlook, they'll be able to
see (and ensure) whether or not the generated vcard details in the
"add to address book" dialog match the page's visible details or
not.
After all, isn't that what microformats are there for? Being
consumed by "machines" that can make something useful with them?
Almost.
They are there so that people and machines can share info.
If the machineable info is not routinely passing through the
consciousness of the communicating principals (that is, people), then
it must be expected that the machine and the person will frequently
have different values for the same datum. Not a good thing.
The old saw is, "out of sight, out of mind." In this case it is "use
it or lose it (it's validity)" for data.
Microformats are to eliminate the mumbo-jumbo quality of the data
the machines deal with; rather to give them the same many-eyeballs
'bazaar' checking support as the virally-maintained meanings of plain
English (Chinese, Arabic or what have you...).
That's a little overstated, but the devil is in the details.
If in some community of communication, the data is routinely
extracted into view often enough so that bad data tend to get weeded
out, then the storage or transmission form doesn't have to be
directly comprehensible by people. But one of the virtues of markup
languages is just how much of the info is directly under the quality
control of people; expressed in as little-encoded form as can be
gotten away with.
Al
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