Re: [uf-discuss] Comments from IBM/Lotus rep about Microformats
On 12/5/06, Scott Reynen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... In HTML or JSON, new formats need new parsers, which must be written by someone. Exactly. The point is if you have a generic model you have a generic parser. Elias is coming from an RDF background, and microformats simply aren't RDF, and they never will be. And that's a good thing. If what you want is RDF, just use RDF. The issue isn't really microformats vs. RDF (except as RDF provides a model), but microformats vs. RDFa. Both microformats and RDFa are addressing the exact same use cases and requirements (augmenting visible content with structured data). RDFa includes namespacing, the lack of which is already a problem in microformats (witness hCite and the serious awkwardness that title will be indicate using fn), and which will grow over time as more and more people want to mark up their content. Moreover, the need to write dedicate code for each new microformat will also present serious scalability problems. Finally, that there's no model at the heart of microformats with clear extension rules means that the vaunted social process here is a mess. It's all centralized, and people get frustrated when their pet property isn't included because they know what that means: the tools written for the blessed microformats won't see them. So while it might be comforting to dismiss RDFa and it's not our problem, I don't think it's good strategy. Bruce ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] species microformats OpenSearch
On Dec 6, 2006, at 1:14 AM, Shorthouse, David wrote: To that end, I now make use of uBio LSIDs marked-up species pages with: h1span class=species urn:lsid:ubio.org:namebank:2029133Theridion agrifoliae/span Levi, 1957/h1 .in the hopes that uBio's and other LSIDs will eventually contribute to the semantic web in a taxonomically intelligent way. This in my opinion is the way to go with microformats. Hi David. Welcome to the list. The above seems to me very unlikely to be adopted by HTML publishers. That LSID URN refers to an RDF resource, and RDF is not intended to be consumed by humans. Microformats are for humans first. Also, the RDF resource lists the canonical name as Theridion agrifoliae, so that alone should be canonically descriptive, right? What exactly is the benefit of repeating this information in the class when it's already in the content? http://names.ubio.org/authority/metadata.php? lsid=urn:lsid:ubio.org:namebank:2029133 I simply cannot comprehend how something like: h1span class=speciesTheridion agrifoliae/span Levi, 1957/h1 .could ever contribute to the semantic web in a meaningful way will stand the test of taxonomic revisions (i.e how do the current species microformats deal with synonyms, homonyms, and other recognized nomenclature?). Synonyms and other nomenclature are covered by abbr, e.g.: Along came a abbr title=Theridion agrifoliae class=speciesspider/abbr and sat down beside her. This keeps the more precise version accessible to human readers (unlike class names), without requiring them to read it. Homonyms should be irrelevant to markup, as parsers read only HTML text, not audio. If there are real limitations to the simpler solution, please describe them in more detail. It would be especially helpful if you have content you can try marking up and describe the specific problems you face, to keep away from hypotheticals. But if you're just looking for a more general syntax for these semantics, you may want to just use RDF instead of microformats. We're not trying to mark up everything here - just enough to be useful. Regarding OpenSearch, anyone can return microformat results in OpenSearch format, but I don't know of anyone doing so yet. Technorati and Alexa are both running early microformat aggregators, but the species microformat is just getting started so there's not much to aggregate yet. Peace, Scott ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] Comments from IBM/Lotus rep about Microformats
From: Bruce D'Arcus [EMAIL PROTECTED] The issue isn't really microformats vs. RDF (except as RDF provides a model), but microformats vs. RDFa. [snip] So while it might be comforting to dismiss RDFa and it's not our problem, I don't think it's good strategy. I agree.. Parsing Per [1] RDFa is akin to a language for microformats, as opposed to the current microformats which are a 'particular' defined set of class names in a defined order. A 'language parser' could parse all combinations of 'syntactically' correct RDFa, whereas with microformats each particular format requires a particular parser. Rendering Now when it comes to rendering the 'parsed output', knowing what the parsed output is, is necessary. This is where the need is to understand the 'particular output' *OR* have a generic container (an hItem or a micro-microformat for an item) so all-purpose renderers can view 'unknown/particular' parsed output as a blackbox. Distributed parsing Allows for custom microformats to be developed with their associated custom parsers and the output passed to the rendering engine. (possibly discovered by distributed rendering) Note: This does not need any 'approval process' as all publishers are free to do this today i.e. build a custom microformat, markup their pages appropriately, build a browser plug-in that understands this and build a cutom renderer. In other words, in the absence of a language parser (which can parse all combinations of a syntactically correct RDFa) the other way to accomodate custom microformats (elias's need) is through distributed parsing. Another way to look at it is that microformats (with defined formats == known rendering) are aggregator-friendly, where RDFa and distributed parsing/rendering are more user/institution friendly which may explain where google/technorati(aggregator) v. ibm(institution) are coming from. My own feeling is that a model which includes both 1. a uf-language (RDFa) and 2. canned formats (microformats) allows for greater flexibility, with canned formats allowing for aggregators/multiple tool vendors, where custom format developers would have the burden/opportunity of rolling their own renderers. [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-rdfa-primer/ S. Sriram ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] Comments from IBM/Lotus rep about Microformats
On Dec 6, 2006, at 7:45 AM, Bruce D'Arcus wrote: On 12/5/06, Scott Reynen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In HTML or JSON, new formats need new parsers, which must be written by someone. Exactly. The point is if you have a generic model you have a generic parser. Right. HTML doesn't have a generic semantic model. JSON doesn't either, nor does XML. These are all data models. But all can be used to represent a generic semantic model, such as RDF. If there were a generic semantic model established with JSON syntax (RDF/ JSON?), we could convert microformats to it just as easily as we can convert microformats to RDF/XML, but I don't know of any such model, and microformats themselves certainly aren't that model. Elias is coming from an RDF background, and microformats simply aren't RDF, and they never will be. And that's a good thing. If what you want is RDF, just use RDF. The issue isn't really microformats vs. RDF (except as RDF provides a model), but microformats vs. RDFa. I don't think the issue is vs. at all. The two approaches solve different problems, are interoperable, and collectively improve the semantics of the web. It's all good. It's just not all the same. And the differences are a good thing. Both microformats and RDFa are addressing the exact same use cases and requirements (augmenting visible content with structured data). I don't think the use cases and requirements are the same at all, and I hope they never are or we're just doing redundant work here. RDFa's use cases include a generic semantic model. Microformats do not. Microformats have a requirement of making publishing as easy as possible to maximize adoption. RDFa does not share this requirement. These are two different efforts that will lose usefulness if merged into one. RDFa includes namespacing, the lack of which is already a problem in microformats (witness hCite and the serious awkwardness that title will be indicate using fn), and which will grow over time as more and more people want to mark up their content. I don't think that's a problem. I think it's just a limited goal of solving specific problems as simply as possible. If people want to solve general problems without the constraints of keeping it simple for publishers, I'd say they should do that somewhere else. The RDF community seems like an obvious choice. I hope the various attempts at marking up the RDF model in HTML syntax work out well, but I don't think that should become a goal of this community. Moreover, the need to write dedicate code for each new microformat will also present serious scalability problems. So then microformats won't scale quickly. That's okay. RDF can scale quickly while microformats are more accessible to HTML publishers. We can build inter-op tools and everyone can be happy. Finally, that there's no model at the heart of microformats with clear extension rules means that the vaunted social process here is a mess. It's all centralized, and people get frustrated when their pet property isn't included because they know what that means: the tools written for the blessed microformats won't see them. Right, so if you want a semantic model at the heart of your HTML markup, there's one already developed in RDFa. Or you could develop another. But microformats can not have a semantic model beyond HTML without becoming more cumbersome to HTML publishers, and that's something we should avoid. From my perspective, all of these attempts to make microformats more generalizable are sort of like telling people who are doing math on their fingers that they should stop because that won't scale. That's true, but they don't want it to scale right now. They just want to solve a simple problem using familiar tools. When they get to calculus, they'll pull out the calculator. I don't want to see microformats turned into a calculator while there are plenty of finger-math problems left to be solved. So while it might be comforting to dismiss RDFa and it's not our problem, I don't think it's good strategy. A good strategy toward what end? I think Elias has a problem that microformats are not intended to solve. What he wants to do is have a generic semantic model that anyone can use with any type of data, and put it in HTML. What microformats are intended to do is provide specific semantic models, not just /in/ HTML, but using the familiar tools of HTML as much as possible. Peace, Scott ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] Comments from IBM/Lotus rep about Microformats
From: Scott Reynen [EMAIL PROTECTED] So while it might be comforting to dismiss RDFa and it's not our problem, I don't think it's good strategy. A good strategy toward what end? I think Elias has a problem that microformats are not intended to solve. What he wants to do is have a generic semantic model that anyone can use with any type of data, and put it in HTML. What microformats are intended to do is provide specific semantic models, not just /in/ HTML, but using the familiar tools of HTML as much as possible. That's right, I think that what RDFa does is hint at realising the potential that microformats (in general) offer (to institutions), which 'microformats.org' with its inherent (and probably valid) limitations stops short of. Maybe, thinking of RDFa as microformats (in general) and microformats.org/microformats as microfortmatted-objects (in particular) might help understand this relationship better. S. Sriram ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] hCard/ adr clarification
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Brian Suda [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Should adr be required, if any of its sub-categories are present, in hCard? [...] i guess the short answer is: If a ADR child is present it is NOT manditory to make ADR present, but it will NOT be parsed into a vCard. it will ONLY be considered part of the hCard data IF it is a child of ADR, but neither the ADR or child-property are required. I hope this makes sense and help? Yes, thank you - please note the change I've made, to that effect, to the hCard cheatsheet on the 'wiki': http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard-cheatsheet though I suspect the same applies to other sub-properties, too? -- Andy Mabbett Say NO! to compulsory ID Cards: http://www.no2id.net/ Free Our Data: http://www.freeourdata.org.uk ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] species microformats OpenSearch
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Shorthouse, David [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes I am a relative newcomer to microformats and come with a biological sciences background so am most interested in the species microformat group of discussions (http://microformats.org/wiki/species). It's good to have you aboard. Rod Page and I with contributions from Charles Roper have been having an interesting discussion about OpenSearch on his iSpecies (http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/ispecies/) blog (http://ispecies.blogspot.com/) as it relates to The Nearctic Spider Database's use of some software called Zoom Search. I couldn't find that discussion. Can you post specific URL(s), please? Of particular concern to me is: 1) using correct appropriate nomenclature and, 2) providing a means to aggregate the sorts of species pages produced as exemplified by The Nearctic Spider Database (http://canadianarachnology.dyndns.org/data/canada_spiders/). Both of which are allowed BUT NOT ENFORCED by the proposal as it stands. To that end, I now make use of uBio LSIDs marked-up species pages with: h1span class=species urn:lsid:ubio.org:namebank:2029133Theridion agrifoliae/span Levi, 1957/h1 Your mark-up does not match the current proposal; the name will change from species; the URN in your example is not visible, and you have not (though that's optional) marked up the authority. .in the hopes that uBio's and other LSIDs will eventually contribute to the semantic web in a taxonomically intelligent way. Note that that's a hypothetical future development, which may or may not happen. Microformats are concerned with existing practices. This in my opinion is the way to go with microformats. What, specifically is? I simply cannot comprehend how something like: h1span class=speciesTheridion agrifoliae/span Levi, 1957/h1 .could ever contribute to the semantic web in a meaningful way I'm sorry that you cannot see that; and I hope to be able to persuade you otherwise - but note that your lack of comprehension in that regard is not a failing on behalf of the proposal. At the very least, your example conveys more, and more semantic, information than simply: h1Theridion agrifoliae Levi, 1957/h1 will stand the test of taxonomic revisions How does plain text do that? As well as allowing a professional biologist to mark up the sort of thing you deal with, the proposal is intended to allow an author to indicate that in, say: I saw a Blackbird in John's garden or Birds seen from HMS Beagle included Diomedea exulans or We recommend that you buy our Rose 'peace' for your gardens that Blackbird, Diomedea exulans and Rose 'peace' are species, and not garden or Beagle. As Bruce D'Arcus wrote earlier today: in the real practical world out there, people want to describe what they want to describe; not to conform to some limited set of terms that only get agreed to through some tortuous process of which the vast majority of people couldn't be bothered. (i.e how do the current species microformats deal with synonyms, homonyms, and other recognized nomenclature?). I believe this has already been answered; though note that there are no current species microformats, only a proposal for discussion. -- Andy Mabbett Say NO! to compulsory ID Cards: http://www.no2id.net/ Free Our Data: http://www.freeourdata.org.uk ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] Use of icons?
Hi there, I like these icons but I think, like what happened with the RSS icon an dialogue needs to happen between interested parties (uf developers, browser makers, etc) in regards to their use. And if sites like Technorati also start using them, regular users will become more familiar with these icons and their use. In regards to useage, if I link to you on my site as an hCard, should I create a class selector that adds a hCard image to the link similar to an external link graphic)? If I have an hCalendar, should I add a graphic to each event, or should I add only one that creates a hCalendar feed? I'm on my blackberry at the moment so I don't remeber but is their an icon for a single hCalendar event and an icon for a hCalendar feed? Then maybe I can use both in the above example. On my own site I currently use the hAtom one (http://digitalspaghetti.me.uk - allthough the XSLT is not working at the moment, an issue with headers and the JS script I am using). I'm also going to put forward my own icon for MicroID's (although not a current 'accepted' microformat, it's one I am working with) in a Drupal module that you can see at work on my site. Actually, that is another issue as well. Again I can't see the licence at the moment (MIT?), but the current one I know does not allow me to include these icons with my project in Drupal. How about making these icons dual licence with GPL? Tane http://digitalspaghetti.me.uk On 12/6/06, Angus McIntyre [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: By now I imagine everyone has seen the elegant microformats icons offered by Chris Messina and Wolfgang Bartelme at: http://www.bartelme.at/journal/archive/microformats_icons/ http://www.factorycity.net/projects/microformats-icons/ What's not clear to me is what best practice for using these icons (or any other microformats-related icons) would be, and Chris and Wolfgang don't actually give any hints. I'd like to use them, as part of a general policy of promoting and advertising microformatty goodness. The question in my mind is, should they be used as decorative elements that flag the presence of particular microformats within a page, or are there implementable actions that can be associated with each icon? What will users expect, or what should they be educated to expect when they see icons like these or even the 'standard' microformats icon? Angus ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
[uf-discuss] ClearForest Mashup competition
I know it's short notice (ends 11 December), but some of you might like to try your hands at the Mashup contest being run by ClearForest: http://microformats.org/wiki/advocacy#ClearForest ClearForest uses natural language processing tools to recognise people, organisations, places, events and CVs (resumes) in web pages, so would benefit from also recognising hCard, hResume, hCalendar, Geo, Adr, etc. and could use them in its output. -- Andy Mabbett Say NO! to compulsory ID Cards: http://www.no2id.net/ Free Our Data: http://www.freeourdata.org.uk ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] Comments from IBM/Lotus rep about Microformats
Why should RDFa get to mooch of the reputation that microformats has developed over the last 24 months? That reputation was developed by a lot of hard work by a lot of people (and really hard work by a few). What has RDFa brought to the table? Like microformats, RDFa wants to carry inline machine readable data with human readable data. Beyond this? It models data in a way that no one uses, to solve problems no one has, in a way that no one can find a use for [1][2]. The best part about microformats (IMHO) is not the class and rel and abbr stuff, but the fact that it deliberately constrains itself to real problems that people are actually having. Regards, etc... David [1] http://www.google.com/search?hl=enq=rdf+applicationsbtnG=Google+Search [2] http://programmableweb.com/apis On 12/6/06, S. Sriram [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That's right, I think that what RDFa does is hint at realising the potential that microformats (in general) offer (to institutions), which 'microformats.org' with its inherent (and probably valid) limitations stops short of. Maybe, thinking of RDFa as microformats (in general) and microformats.org/microformats as microfortmatted-objects (in particular) might help understand this relationship better. ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] Comments from IBM/Lotus rep about Microformats
Some clarification: Isn't microformats more than one microformat? And what is a microformat? I thought a microformat was a specific collection of defined names and structure defined by a rigorous process of market research intended to consider pervasive use of semantic html in order to increase data fidelity of HTML-borne data widely distributed on the web. When people mention microformats they often are referring to the use of semantic html to increase data fidelity. This is extremely confusing because a microformat, or Microformat, is something more than any use of semantic html, it's a specific use to represent specific data. That is to say that the word microformats does not refer to a technique of data representation. Microformats are not a general extension mechanism, and such language is very confusing, and harmful to discussion. The general extension mechanism is to publish data using the best semantic techniques available, currently via class,rel,profile... The fact that microformats use these means doesn't somehow turn microformats into a technique for doing so. Vendors, authors, or anyone, can use the same techniques to raise proprietary data fidelity in HTML, but that doesn't turn them into a microformat. Data formats using these techniques achieve candidacy as a microformat when their use is widespread. Talk of general microformats doesn't make sense. Talk of microformats as technique also does not make sense. Talk of microformats as a group makes sense, but only when it refers to more than one actual microformat. When applied to people, Microformateers is probably better. Ryan, Thanks for helping to clear this up on the whatwg list, to some degree. Do we need to be more protective of our vocabulary? -Ben P.S. The definition I've given is what I understand microformats to be. AFAIK, there is no official definition, which may be contributing to the splintering of our vocabulary and mindshare. If I'm wrong I'm sure someone will correct me. ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] Use of icons?
Love the icons! As one who originally expressed interest in this concept I'm happy to see it come about :D One sadly missing icon seems to be an XOXO icon to replace the one I use at http://blogxoxo.blogspot.com/ and elsewhere... --- Singpolyma On 12/6/06, Angus McIntyre [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: By now I imagine everyone has seen the elegant microformats icons offered by Chris Messina and Wolfgang Bartelme at: http://www.bartelme.at/journal/archive/microformats_icons/ http://www.factorycity.net/projects/microformats-icons/ What's not clear to me is what best practice for using these icons (or any other microformats-related icons) would be, and Chris and Wolfgang don't actually give any hints. I'd like to use them, as part of a general policy of promoting and advertising microformatty goodness. The question in my mind is, should they be used as decorative elements that flag the presence of particular microformats within a page, or are there implementable actions that can be associated with each icon? What will users expect, or what should they be educated to expect when they see icons like these or even the 'standard' microformats icon? Angus ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss -- - Stephen Paul Weber, Amateur Writer http://www.awriterz.org MSN/GTalk/Jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ICQ/AIM: 103332966 BLOG: http://singpolyma-tech.blogspot.com/ ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] species microformats OpenSearch
.could ever contribute to the semantic web in a meaningful way will stand the test of taxonomic revisions I agree with this. It's unclear to me how the current proposal even relates to the research gathered, and what use cases it might support. Typically, microformat proposals are heavily influenced by the analysis of examples collected. I've tried doing this work at http://microformats.org/wiki/species-examples-regrouped. Most of the useful examples look similar to one of the sites you mentioned: a href=/data/spiders/14441 onMouseOver=window.status='';return true title='Click for species description' iAculepeira carbonarioides/i (Keyserling, 1892) /a Looks to me like most mentions of species don't contain much information about them, but rather link to to another page that does. To me this resembles tagging, where species mentioned is the tag, and the endpoint of the url is the resource representative of the tag. Perhaps with further analysis, we can modify hReview or xFolk to be useful for species, in order to model what is actually happening in the market. Can you: * elaborate on the kinds of use cases you would expect a species microformat to support * confirm whether or not the above model is the most common way of publishing species mentions * collect intances of the authoritative resources and their markup of the species * what is the most commonly published information (on the authoritative end) * how is it represented (on the authoritative end) Ben On 12/5/06, Shorthouse, David [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Folks, I am a relative newcomer to microformats and come with a biological sciences background so am most interested in the species microformat group of discussions (http://microformats.org/wiki/species). Rod Page and I with contributions from Charles Roper have been having an interesting discussion about OpenSearch on his iSpecies (http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/ispecies/) blog (http://ispecies.blogspot.com/) as it relates to The Nearctic Spider Database's use of some software called Zoom Search. Of particular concern to me is: 1) using correct appropriate nomenclature and, 2) providing a means to aggregate the sorts of species pages produced as exemplified by The Nearctic Spider Database (http://canadianarachnology.dyndns.org/data/canada_spiders/). To that end, I now make use of uBio LSIDs marked-up species pages with: h1span class=species urn:lsid:ubio.org:namebank:2029133Theridion agrifoliae/span Levi, 1957/h1 .in the hopes that uBio's and other LSIDs will eventually contribute to the semantic web in a taxonomically intelligent way. This in my opinion is the way to go with microformats. I simply cannot comprehend how something like: h1span class=speciesTheridion agrifoliae/span Levi, 1957/h1 .could ever contribute to the semantic web in a meaningful way will stand the test of taxonomic revisions (i.e how do the current species microformats deal with synonyms, homonyms, and other recognized nomenclature?). Finally, what steps have been taken to aggregate or make use of species microformats and can OpenSearch play some sort of role here in taking the next step? David P. Shorthouse -- Department of Biological Sciences CW-403, Biological Sciences Centre University of Alberta Edmonton, AB T6G 2E9 Phone: 1-780-492-3080 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://canadianarachnology.webhop.net http://arachnidforum.webhop.net -- ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
RE: [uf-discuss] species microformats OpenSearch
.could ever contribute to the semantic web in a meaningful way will stand the test of taxonomic revisions I agree with this. It's unclear to me how the current proposal even relates to the research gathered, and what use cases it might support. Typically, microformat proposals are heavily influenced by the analysis of examples collected. I've tried doing this work at http://microformats.org/wiki/species-examples-regrouped. Most of the useful examples look similar to one of the sites you mentioned: a href=/data/spiders/14441 onMouseOver=window.status='';return true title='Click for species description' iAculepeira carbonarioides/i (Keyserling, 1892) /a Looks to me like most mentions of species don't contain much information about them, but rather link to to another page that does. To me this resembles tagging, where species mentioned is the tag, and the endpoint of the url is the resource representative of the tag. [David Shorthouse wrote:] Indeed, this is a lot like tagging and are nothing more than links to other species pages in an attempt to permit users a chance to quickly get to information about other species in the same Genus as the one on the currently visible page. Also in a trivial way, this is to permit search engine spiders a chance to navigate the thousands of pages. What is actually more useful from a taxonomic standpoint are the Synonyms and Other Recognized Nomenclature tables on each species page that are the 1:1 mappings of historic nomenclature to that currently recognized. These of course also have LSIDs. Perhaps with further analysis, we can modify hReview or xFolk to be useful for species, in order to model what is actually happening in the market. Can you: * elaborate on the kinds of use cases you would expect a species microformat to support [David Shorthouse wrote:] What I would ultimately hope for is a means to aggregate such species pages across multiple resources. This means some sort of scaffolding that is intelligent enough to know that a species with a microformat for Lycosa fuscula Thorell, 1875 and another for Pardosa fuscula (Thorell, 1875) refer to the very same species. A browser plug-in that found species microformats on the page could highlight these provide something like a floating div to indicate current nomenclature in the event that a tagged name is not the currently recognized name. This would permit one unfamiliar (or familiar) with the species an opportunity to quickly recognize that the provided page may have useful information, but that the nomenclature is dated. * confirm whether or not the above model is the most common way of publishing species mentions [David Shorthouse wrote:] In fact, there is no model. The vast majority of similar species pages have no common ground, no tagging, and are merely free-form text with images. * collect intances of the authoritative resources and their markup of the species * what is the most commonly published information (on the authoritative end) [David Shorthouse wrote:] These would be peer-reviewed publications, most of which are paper-based. The ICZN and other organization have their rule-set for what constitutes a new species name, but there is little in place to programmatically tap into that data, though many organizations are making steps toward that ultimate goal. Speaking about spiders, the authoritative work for their nomenclature is the World Spider Catalog: http://research.amnh.org/entomology/spiders/catalog/INTRO1.html, which is essentially an HTML representation of a paper-based publication with no means to programmatically tap into the data. * how is it represented (on the authoritative end) [David Shorthouse wrote:] Unfortunately, I can't speak to that. Ben ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] species microformats OpenSearch
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Shorthouse, David [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Rod Page and I with contributions from Charles Roper have been having an interesting discussion about OpenSearch on his iSpecies (http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/ispecies/) blog (http://ispecies.blogspot.com/) as it relates to The Nearctic Spider Database's use of some software called Zoom Search. I couldn't find that discussion. Can you post specific URL(s), please? You didn't write that; I did. [David Shorthouse wrote:] Please use a more standard quoting method, so that it's more apparent what you are saying, and so that what you're quoting doesn't appear to have been written by you. Thank you. If you're a windows user, you may find QuoteRight: http://freestuff.grok.co.uk/quoteright/index.html which is freeware, useful; though I believe that your mail client will support proper quoting by itself. You may also find: http://www.usenet.org.uk/ukpost.html informative (section 3 especially) even though it's specifically aimed at uk.* usenet newsgroups. http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=18671685postID=116507514354753306 Thank you. I see that Charles pointed you at some of the introductory pages about Microformats, which should have allayed some of the concerns and misapprehensions in your original post here. Microformats are concerned with existing practices. [David Shorthouse wrote:] Which are? ...Documented on the *.examples pages. This in my opinion is the way to go with microformats. What, specifically is? [David Shorthouse wrote:] Linking microformats with a system to track nomenclature like LSIDs thus elevate the human-readable aspect of these to something more programmatically taxonomically useful. Then you appear to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what microformats are about. You also appear to give an answer specific to species, when your previous comment was apparently about microformats, plural and general. I simply cannot comprehend how something like: h1span class=speciesTheridion agrifoliae/span Levi, 1957/h1 .could ever contribute to the semantic web in a meaningful way I'm sorry that you cannot see that; and I hope to be able to persuade you otherwise - but note that your lack of comprehension in that regard is not a failing on behalf of the proposal. [David Shorthouse wrote:] And this gets me on-board supportive of microformats how? Why would you expect your admitted lack of comprehension to do that? will stand the test of taxonomic revisions How does plain text do that? [David Shorthouse wrote:] It doesn't. I don't follow your question. How do microformats do that? They are not intended to. Why would you suppose otherwise. LSIDs CAN. Indeed. And LSIDs could be marked up, using the current proposal. As well as allowing a professional biologist to mark up the sort of thing you deal with, the proposal is intended to allow an author to indicate that in, say: I saw a Blackbird in John's garden or Birds seen from HMS Beagle included Diomedea exulans or We recommend that you buy our Rose 'peace' for your gardens that Blackbird, Diomedea exulans and Rose 'peace' are species, and not garden or Beagle. [David Shorthouse wrote:] These are rather trivial examples. They are common examples. As Bruce D'Arcus wrote earlier today: in the real practical world out there, people want to describe what they want to describe; not to conform to some limited set of terms that only get agreed to through some tortuous process of which the vast majority of people couldn't be bothered. [David Shorthouse wrote:] Sounds like microformats to the majority of species page providers in museums other institutions. You have spoken to them all?!? In any case, microformats are not just for people in museums and other institutions. (i.e how do the current species microformats deal with synonyms, homonyms, and other recognized nomenclature?). I believe this has already been answered; though note that there are no current species microformats, only a proposal for discussion. [David Shorthouse wrote:] So should I bother marking-up my species pages now or wait until there is evidence that they are actually being used in a taxonomically rigorous manner? Why would you expect them to be used in such a manner? That's not the problem they're intended to solve. -- Andy Mabbett Say NO! to compulsory ID Cards: http://www.no2id.net/ Free Our Data: http://www.freeourdata.org.uk ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] species microformats OpenSearch
On Dec 6, 2006, at 5:35 PM, Andy Mabbett wrote: .could ever contribute to the semantic web in a meaningful way will stand the test of taxonomic revisions I agree with this. You may well be right - but since dealing with taxonomic revisions is entirely outside the scope of uFs, so what? I think I agree with Andy on this, but I'm finding it difficult to read past what appears to me to be unhelpful hostility. People change names, but hCard doesn't account for this. Publishers are expected to update their hCards when names change, or have invalid hCards, because name changes are an edge case that shouldn't inconvenience publishers in general by making the microformat less clear. Are species name changes any different? Peace, Scott ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] species microformats OpenSearch
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Scott Reynen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes On Dec 6, 2006, at 5:35 PM, Andy Mabbett wrote: .could ever contribute to the semantic web in a meaningful way will stand the test of taxonomic revisions I agree with this. You may well be right - but since dealing with taxonomic revisions is entirely outside the scope of uFs, so what? I think I agree with Andy on this, but I'm finding it difficult to read past what appears to me to be unhelpful hostility. I'm trying not to let such attitudes get to me. People change names, but hCard doesn't account for this. Publishers are expected to update their hCards when names change, or have invalid hCards, because name changes are an edge case that shouldn't inconvenience publishers in general by making the microformat less clear. Are species name changes any different? Yes; there are definitive web sites which will accept a species' out-of-date binominal name (passed, perhaps, by a user agent/ tool parsing a microformat according to the current proposal) and return the definitive current version (or alternatives where a species has been split into two). There are no equivalents for renamed people. -- Andy Mabbett Say NO! to compulsory ID Cards: http://www.no2id.net/ Free Our Data: http://www.freeourdata.org.uk ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] species microformats OpenSearch
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Benjamin West [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes What market? Market may have several meanings: * the mindshare of developers * documents on the web * formats to represent data 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.' -- Andy Mabbett Say NO! to compulsory ID Cards: http://www.no2id.net/ Free Our Data: http://www.freeourdata.org.uk ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] species microformats OpenSearch
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Shorthouse, David [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes The advantage of the LSIDs is that they may act as a mapping catalog that is capable of drawing the lines from old names (or even current names that have not been fully accepted) to current nomenclature. Merely using Theridion agrifoliae I would argue is not even enough for humans. What proportion of species references *currently on the web* [1] use an LSID, and what proportion use a binominal or suchlike? Hint: Google finds 105 for Theridion agrifoliae; and *zero* for 3561403 + Theridion agrifoliae Google finds about 504,000 for parus major; and *zero for 384 8440 + parus major Note also that a search for the above boinominals on the uBio website: http://names.ubio.org/browser/search.php returns the relevant LSIDs' one use-case for the microformat would be to find the binominal on a web page, and pass it to uBio, in order to return the LSID. [1] e.g. those at http://microformats.org/wiki/species-examples -- Andy Mabbett Say NO! to compulsory ID Cards: http://www.no2id.net/ Free Our Data: http://www.freeourdata.org.uk ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
RE: [uf-discuss] Comments from IBM/Lotus rep about Microformats
Bruce D'Arcus wrote: RDFa includes namespacing, the lack of which is already a problem in microformats (witness hCite and the serious awkwardness that title will be indicate using fn), and which will grow over time as more and more people want to mark up their content. Moreover, the need to write dedicate code for each new microformat will also present serious scalability problems. Finally, that there's no model at the heart of microformats with clear extension rules means that the vaunted social process here is a mess. It's all centralized, and people get frustrated when their pet property isn't included because they know what that means: the tools written for the blessed microformats won't see them. I agree with your comments. Whereas I think XML namespaces are too difficult for widespread adoption in HTML markup, I think the lack of any similar scope mechanism for Microformats and the resistance of some in the Microformat to prepare Microformats for scaling in usage and application mean that Microformats may end up being remembered as a good idea at the time but quite possibly not in use several years out. Scott Reynen wrote: I think it's just a limited goal of solving specific problems as simply as possible. If people want to solve general problems without the constraints of keeping it simple for publishers, I'd say they should do that somewhere else. I think you are creating a false dichotomy. I do agree that RDF is too difficult, but I don't think addressing the issues in another way would necessarily sacrifice ease of use. David Janes wrote: The best part about microformats (IMHO) is not the class and rel and abbr stuff, but the fact that it deliberately constrains itself to real problems that people are actually having. But only those real problems, as Bruce pointed out, that conform to some limited set of terms that only get agreed to through some tortuous process of which the vast majority of people couldn't be bothered. Benjamin West wrote: Talk of general microformats doesn't make sense. Talk of microformats as technique also does not make sense. If that is true, then having Microformat Design Patterns[1] doesn't make sense. Which is it? The core problem is no strategies have been adopted to avoid naming collisions, and to avoid having the whole concept self destruct from it's own weight of complexity. People who want to contribute but can't because the centralized Microformat community is not interested will go off and create their own and names start clashing, we'll just be left with one big mess. Most of the Microformat community seems to want to keep Microformats a tight knit club focused on a small number of use cases that reviews and approves everything, declining things they don't like, but I think there is really an obligation to the Internet at large to address how to scale the process because Microformats squat on a scare resource (names in classes.) With great power comes great responsibility; Microformats has a responsibility to the web at large to ensure Microformats can scale, but all I've seen is resistence to even consider that (which is one of the reason's I've been quiet lately.) -Mike Schinkel http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/ http://www.welldesignedurls.org/ [1] http://microformats.org/wiki/Main_Page#Design_Patterns ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] Comments from IBM/Lotus rep about Microformats
Benjamin West wrote: Talk of general microformats doesn't make sense. Talk of microformats as technique also does not make sense. If that is true, then having Microformat Design Patterns[1] doesn't make sense. Which is it? I'm not sure what you mean. A design pattern is a technique, which is separate from what a microformat is. A microformat is an application of several techniques to a specific end. When some techniques prove successful, they become patterns. The techniques are means for generalized extensions, while a microformat is a specific application of those techniques for a specific extension. Microformats exhibit emergent characteristics from wide usage on the web; this characteristic means that these formats only exist because they have already scaled --even before they were borne. So I guess I'm not sure what the concern for scaling is. Ben ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
