[uf-discuss] Microformats and RDFa not as far apart as previously thought
There have been some interesting blog posts by people at the BBC, Mozilla and W3C about Microformats and RDFa in the past two days. The first covers BBC's decision to drop support for the abbr-based design pattern written by Michael Smethurst (who worked with this community on hAudio among other things): Removing abbr-based Microformats from BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/06/removing_microformats_from_bbc.shtml The second is a response from John Resig, of jQuery/Mozilla fame, here: BBC Removing Microformat Support http://ejohn.org/blog/bbc-removing-microformat-support/ The third is written by Mark Birbeck, who is the guy that proposed RDFa several years ago and is the primary one behind the processing rules and architecture for RDFa: Microformats and RDFa are not as far apart as people think http://internet-apps.blogspot.com/2008/06/microformats-and-rdfa-are-not-as-far.html We've had discussions that parallel the ones above last summer: http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-new/2007-July/000592.html http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2007-October/010850.html http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2007-October/010859.html http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2007-October/010879.html I tend to agree with Edd Dumbill's post: http://times.usefulinc.com/2008/06/24-uf-rdfa Some are moving too quickly to dismiss both Microformats AND RDFa - the two communities are cross-pollinating and there has been significant lessons learned from both approaches. If you're going to blog about this or discuss it - please don't fuel the Microformats vs. RDFa fire by picking sides... it's detrimental to both communities. Like Edd stated in his post, we have a bug that we need to fix (abbr design pattern causing screen reader usability issues) and that has been hanging over our heads for some time now. BBC's decision is a lesson learned but is in no way some sort of sign that Microformats is on it's way out. Thoughts from the community? Anybody else blogging about this? -- manu -- Manu Sporny President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc. blog: Blacksburg BarCamp 1.0 http://blog.digitalbazaar.com/2008/05/15/blacksburg-barcamp-10/ ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] Microformats and RDFa not as far apart as previously thought
On 24/06/2008, Manu Sporny [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hey Manu, Thanks for the links. I'm trying to keep track of all the converastions popping up around this. Some are moving too quickly to dismiss both Microformats AND RDFa - the two communities are cross-pollinating and there has been significant lessons learned from both approaches. If you're going to blog about this or discuss it - please don't fuel the Microformats vs. RDFa fire by picking sides... it's detrimental to both communities. Agreed. I'm so tired of this verses debate. This isn't a war where anyone has to pick a side. They can work along side one another. Like Edd stated in his post, we have a bug that we need to fix (abbr design pattern causing screen reader usability issues) and that has been hanging over our heads for some time now. BBC's decision is a lesson learned but is in no way some sort of sign that Microformats is on it's way out. I don't know if you saw, but the discussion is happening over on dev [1] (mostly to get parser writer's feedback in the first instance) on how to deal with the abbr. There's been work by Ben Ward on the machine-data[2] options for a while now. I agree, this is just *one* issue that we've failed to solve so far. [1] http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-dev/2008-June/000552.html [2] http://microformats.org/wiki/machine-data -- Frances Berriman http://fberriman.com ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
[uf-discuss] RE: Microformats and RDFa not as far apart as previously thought
Message: 8 Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:03:30 -0400 From: Manu Sporny [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [uf-discuss] Microformats and RDFa not as far apart as previously thought To: Microformats Discuss microformats-discuss@microformats.org Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 There have been some interesting blog posts by people at the BBC, Mozilla and W3C about Microformats and RDFa in the past two days. The first covers BBC's decision to drop support for the abbr-based design pattern written by Michael Smethurst (who worked with this community on hAudio among other things): Removing abbr-based Microformats from BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/06/removing_microformats_from _bbc.shtml I have come to a similar decision. In my case, I will split the human-readable portion entirely from the microformat portion, and the microformat portion will be entirely styled display:none. That applies to machine-intermediated content. I feel it is unreasonable to ask a non-technical person to produce ISO-format dates/times, so microformats do not produce an acceptable solution at this time for marking up meeting announcements. Charles Chas Belov SFMTA Webmaster www.sfmta.com ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] RE: Microformats and RDFa not as far apart as previously thought
Belov, Charles wrote: I feel it is unreasonable to ask a non-technical person to produce ISO-format dates/times, so microformats do not produce an acceptable solution at this time for marking up meeting announcements. I agree that only an editor extension would make writing ISO-format date/time practical by humans, which I never felt was compliant with designed for humans first, machine second. What about the idea of a plain old English microformat (POEM?) based on well-known practices in various languages [1], in the tradition of paving the cows path: these practices are pretty-well established IMO and used by authors in the newspapers, magazines, etc. For instance, in English: span class=dstart lang=en-usOctober 5, 2004/span span class=dstart lang=en-us10/5/2004/span span class=dstart lang=fr5 Octobre 2004/span span class=dstart lang=fr5/10/2004/span The locale could be specified locally (lang=en-us) or inherited from the HTML document or a containing div. Granted it would make the parsing more complex, but it would comply with designed for humans first, machine second. Also, additional class would be required to distinguish the date part from the time part in something like: span class=dstart lang=en-usspan class=dateOctober 5, 2004span at span class=time6PM/span/span Just an idea, Guillaume [1] http://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/vocabulary/date/written ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
[uf-discuss] RE: Microformats and RDFa not as far apart as previously thought
Guillaume Lebleu wrote: span class=dstart lang=en-usOctober 5, 2004/span Cognition already supports this as a last ditch attempt at parsing dates - but I wouldn't recommend it get adopted widely. It's too unreliable; too much work to deal with internationalisation; too much work full-stop in languages that don't provide a handy library that takes care of most of the work. -- Toby A Inkster mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://tobyinkster.co.uk ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] RE: Microformats and RDFa not as far apart as previously thought
Toby A Inkster wrote: Guillaume Lebleu wrote: span class=dstart lang=en-usOctober 5, 2004/span Cognition already supports this as a last ditch attempt at parsing dates - Thank you for the attempt. but I wouldn't recommend it get adopted widely. It's too unreliable; Why is this that requiring that English content writers (I mean only those don't want to use the abbr pattern) to write dates and times in accordance to the existing precise rules of English grammar and publishing style guides (ex. AP stylebook) they know about (or used to know about) is less reliable than asking them to write them twice, one in the format they like and a second time in an ISO format most of them likely don't know about in an relatively arcane syntax? I think it really depends on where our priorities are as a community. If most hCalendar items are destined to be software-generated (including via, say, a TinyMCE plugin) or are added by specialized staff, after the content is authored, I agree with you. On the other hand, if we want actual content authors to be able to add this mark-up, then I think plain old English microformats may be more reliable, and actually more used in the first place, than dark data or RDFa. too much work to deal with internationalisation; I don't think we need to support all locales at once. I don't know in how many written languages BBC publishes in, but it might be that supporting en-uk and en-us might be enough for a start. Also, one can imagine that Microformats tools could focus on the most common written languages and then expose hooks for others to implement support for other locales. too much work full-stop in languages that don't provide a handy library that takes care of most of the work. True, but again, what are our priorities? making programmers' life easier or making content authors and content readers' life easier? Anyway, there are other problems. Just trying to think outside of the class. Guillaume ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
