[microformats-dev] Re: [microformats-discuss] Profiles status

[Bud Gibson]

On Oct 11, 2005, at 8:01, Danny Ayers wrote:

> Right, I don't think it would be desirable to go down that path. I
> must admit I'm not all that sure of the value of XMDP docs as
> currently defined - they're not-quite human readable, not-quite
> machine readable. But as they are being (/will be) defined for the
> microformats then in makes sense to try and use them.
>

If done right, I think XMDPs are adequate for summary human reading  
(sort of an "in a nutshell" version).  They are not a machine  
format.  They just do not give you enough.

I pretty much agree with the diea of writing separate XSLT rules for  
microformat identification and validation.  Generally, I think there  
is room to extend the original idea of microformats (really intended  
as a way to add moderate structure to pages for more search engine  
friendliness) to something that is more amenable to processing as a  
data structure.  This could be achieved by writing automated  
validators for each microformat.

We did something like that for xFolk with greasemonkey here:

http://thecommunityengine.com/resources/xfolk-forms5.user.js

There is a similar and possibly better structured effort in java here:

http://www.pokkari.com/blog/2005/10/05/xfolk-for-java/

Another person, Andreas Haugstrup is in the process of doing this in  
PHP.

Bud