[microformats-dev] hCa* follow links

[Brian Suda]

On the discuss list someone had a question about what they should do
regarding encoding events (partial listings, teasers) on their
homepage which lead to full records that were marked-up with
hCalendar.

That got me to thinking about an hCal/hCard follow attribute value. I
know my REL example is probably a bad idea, but for example:
<a href="/contact/" title="my contact page encoded in hCard"
rel="vcard">contact</a>

When an 'a' element has 'vcard' or 'vevent' it could signify to the
transforming app to fetch this page too and consider it in the
transformation.

Is this a bad idea? would this little transforming app turn into a
run-away spider? or is this any help? because a spider will fetch
every page anyway, telling you that there is an hCa* on the page won't
even save any processor cycles, just because there isn't an explicit
mention of encoding doesn't mean there isn't (so you check for them
anyway), and just because someone says there is an hCa* at the end of
this link doesn't mean there is (so you check anyway)...

which kinda segways into the old Auto-Discovery idea.[1] It hasn't
been looked at in a while, so i'll bring it back to the forefront to
see if we can get some comments and thoughts.

The discuss list has had the rumblings of application support for
microformats, loads of Greasemonkey script links where passed around,
X2V, and rubhub mentions, but nothing about an hCalendar/hCard
repository or spider. If the discussion about FINDING these
microformats is solidified, then maybe some aggrigating applications
might start to pop-up.  I know i'd certainly be interested in building
something like this!

-brian

[1] - http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard-brainstorming#Auto-Discovery

--
brian suda
http://suda.co.uk