From dmueller2001 at gmail.com Mon Dec 17 12:06:18 2007 From: dmueller2001 at gmail.com (Diane Mueller) Date: Mon Dec 17 12:31:20 2007 Subject: [uf-dev] XBRL, XHTML, Microformats and context-aware computing Message-ID: <62325ff60712171206s1892d73dr1fb772d50fdf670d@mail.gmail.com> First, thanks for all the efforts you and your colleagues have put into the Microformats specification and all the groundwork that you have laid that I would like to now exploit.. I'm chairing of a technical working group on Rendering within the XBRL consortium and we currently have a work effort going on around writing up a specification on Microformats for XBRL. As you may already know, XBRL gives us a rich semantic base for financial reporting and all things finance. Think Yahoo Finance on steroids, and you can begin to see the potential here for making the metadata and semantics of finance and accounting accessible to the masses. The US SEC just funded the taxonomy development efforts for the entire US GAAP - and it was just released for Public Review last week. So there are some huge potential here - and the rest of the world's regulators are actually further along than the US. So I would like to pick your collective brains a bit to ensure we are on the right path here - the 'happy path' so to speak. We are hoping to release a Public Working Draft in early January - but we currently have a rather circular debate going on in the Working Group regarding XHTML validity. The debate centers on how 'microformatty' we want our specification to be. The debate is central to whether or not we will go down the 'Microformat' approach or create a specification for Inlining XBRL into XHTML. One of the approaches put forward is more of a Inline mashup rather than Microformats approach - this mashup approach is much easier to write an XSLT to extract valid XBRL from the XHTML. It's simpler, but it doesn't follow allow for the creation of valid XHMTL. It uses additional namespaces which cause the XHTML to be invalid. So my questions are: How important is valid XHTML? Did you and your colleagues go down this path? If so, where did you end up? Should we sacrifice XHTML validity for ease of processing? If so, does this preclude us from partaking in the microformats standard work efforts? What microformat use cases call for strict XHTML validity? What potential use cases for Microformats for Financial Reports could you dream up that might require strict XHTML validity? There are a lot more subtopics, I'd like to connect with you on them with all of you, but first I have to marshal the group to a consensus on this XHTML topic, any thoughts you can share would be most helpful. Diane Mueller Vice President, XBRL Development Justsystems/Canada -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-dev/attachments/20071217/364eb0d7/attachment.html From pmw57 at xtra.co.nz Mon Dec 17 12:56:51 2007 From: pmw57 at xtra.co.nz (Paul Wilkins) Date: Mon Dec 17 12:56:54 2007 Subject: [uf-dev] XBRL, XHTML, Microformats and context-aware computing In-Reply-To: <62325ff60712171206s1892d73dr1fb772d50fdf670d@mail.gmail.com> References: <62325ff60712171206s1892d73dr1fb772d50fdf670d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <18050cf90712171256m6a517951l7e0a0eb19e5c1e13@mail.gmail.com> On Dec 18, 2007 9:06 AM, Diane Mueller wrote: > One of the approaches put forward is more of a Inline mashup rather than > Microformats approach - this mashup approach is much easier to write an XSLT > to extract valid XBRL from the XHTML. It's simpler, but it doesn't follow > allow for the creation of valid XHMTL. It uses additional namespaces which > cause the XHTML to be invalid. > > So my questions are: > > How important is valid XHTML? Did you and your colleagues go down this > path? If so, where did you end up? Valid XHTML is very important to this community. If it's not valid then it's not XHTML and it's likely to cause indigestion to any parsers that come across it. If you're fine with crafting something that's not XHTML then please go ahead, just don't call it XHTML. I like to equate XHTML to a car. Take your average ordinary car, add on some wings and a jet engine, and it becomes, well, a frankenstein monster really. It's not quite an airplane and it's definitely not a car anymore. Any cop would pull you over to stop you using it. The cop is policing the standards of what is a car, so that there is no danger to other car users. With code it's the same deal. Call it XML if that's what it is, but do not call it XHTML if it has wings and bolted on jet engine. -- Paul Wilkins From msporny at digitalbazaar.com Mon Dec 17 13:03:17 2007 From: msporny at digitalbazaar.com (Manu Sporny) Date: Mon Dec 17 13:03:21 2007 Subject: [uf-dev] XBRL, XHTML, Microformats and context-aware computing In-Reply-To: <62325ff60712171206s1892d73dr1fb772d50fdf670d@mail.gmail.com> References: <62325ff60712171206s1892d73dr1fb772d50fdf670d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4766E415.6070505@digitalbazaar.com> Diane Mueller wrote: > So I would like to pick your collective brains a bit to ensure we are on > the right path here - the 'happy path' so to speak. Just a quick note that you're going to probably get different opinions on what the 'happy path' is... The Microformats is a very diverse set of individuals, many philosophies are at work in this community. That being said, there is much to learn from dealing with this community - people are always willing to give their opinion. > One of the approaches put forward is more of a Inline mashup rather than > Microformats approach - this mashup approach is much easier to write an > XSLT to extract valid XBRL from the XHTML. It's simpler, but it doesn't > follow allow for the creation of valid XHMTL. It uses additional > namespaces which cause the XHTML to be invalid. Hmmm... have you looked at RDFa in addition to Microformats? A brief glimpse at your standards documents tells me that they are quite complicated standards. You define several complex taxonomies, which probably means that you have quite a bit of namespacing going on. Microformats try to keep things simple, relying on identifying and standardizing common usage patterns. There is no namespacing in Microformats. What you're doing seems to have more to do with creating a new vocabulary, not necessarily based on common usage patterns. If that is what you intend to do, RDFa will probably help you out more than Microformats. There's still much to learn from this community on how to do web standards correctly, though. > How important is valid XHTML? Incredibly important. You should never, ever be generating invalid XHTML. If you knowingly generate invalid XHTML, you are knowingly breaking the XHTML standard - and that is quite a bad stance for a standards development body, such as yours, to take. > Did you and your colleagues go down this > path? If so, where did you end up? Yes, very briefly. Generating invalid XHTML goes against pre-defined standards (specifically, XHTML). The Microformats community, as well as the RDFa community goes to great lengths to not break existing standards. > Should we sacrifice XHTML validity for ease of processing? No, you should never do this. There are correct ways to solve the problem that you're facing. You should be very strict in what you produce. It looks like you're sacrificing prematurely - there are other options out there. > If so, does > this preclude us from partaking in the microformats standard work efforts? Not necessarily, but you will get push-back from just about every standards body if you choose to voluntarily break existing standards. One of the reasons we have these communities is to prevent people from making bad decisions when creating standards. If you intend to generate invalid XHTML as part of your standard - you're making a dreadful mistake. > What microformat use cases call for strict XHTML validity? Microformats work with XHTML, (among other XML dialects), HTML4 and HTML4.01. Validity isn't required for Microformats... they work in syntactically invalid documents... but that doesn't mean that invalid documents are acceptable. > What potential use cases for Microformats for Financial Reports could > you dream up that might require strict XHTML validity? Don't generate invalid XHTML. It's not a matter of use cases, it's a matter of knowingly breaking a standard. Here are a couple of links to financial issues that the Microformats community is addressing: http://microformats.org/wiki/currency http://microformats.org/wiki/receipt -- manu -- Manu Sporny President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc. blog: Over One Million Songs Available on Bitmunk http://blog.digitalbazaar.com/2007/10/29/one-million-songs-on-bitmunk/ From dmueller2001 at gmail.com Mon Dec 17 14:33:24 2007 From: dmueller2001 at gmail.com (Diane Mueller) Date: Mon Dec 17 14:33:27 2007 Subject: [uf-dev] RE: XBRL, XHTML, Microformats and context-aware computing In-Reply-To: <62325ff60712171206s1892d73dr1fb772d50fdf670d@mail.gmail.com> References: <62325ff60712171206s1892d73dr1fb772d50fdf670d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <62325ff60712171433y1a3e10e4w132945c9811fd145@mail.gmail.com> Perhaps a bit more clarification is need: We're not talking about creating invalid documents, just documents which will not validate against the core XHTML schemas. There are accepted ways of extending the XHTML namespace, but if we do, we know that we must recognize that we no longer have a valid core XHTML document. Another question to add to the list: Has anyone attempted to use Microformats to encode something more complex like MathML and SVG? I'll have to take a closer look at RDFa. Keep the feedback coming, we need the insights.. Diane Mueller Vice President, XBRL Development Justsystems/Canada -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-dev/attachments/20071217/710c3c67/attachment.html From ryan at theryanking.com Mon Dec 17 15:13:56 2007 From: ryan at theryanking.com (ryan) Date: Mon Dec 17 15:14:03 2007 Subject: [uf-dev] RE: XBRL, XHTML, Microformats and context-aware computing In-Reply-To: <62325ff60712171433y1a3e10e4w132945c9811fd145@mail.gmail.com> References: <62325ff60712171206s1892d73dr1fb772d50fdf670d@mail.gmail.com> <62325ff60712171433y1a3e10e4w132945c9811fd145@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <3201A73C-716C-4019-A090-D9DA9618A9EF@theryanking.com> On Dec 17, 2007, at 2:33 PM, Diane Mueller wrote: > Perhaps a bit more clarification is need: > > We're not talking about creating invalid documents, just documents > which > will not validate against the core XHTML schemas. This seems like a contradiction to me. > There are accepted ways of extending the XHTML namespace, but if we > do, we > know that we must recognize that we no longer have a valid core XHTML > document. This makes it sound like you're doing something very different than microformats. Microformats build on existing web technologies in ways that are compatible with existing user agents (like browsers). > Another question to add to the list: > > Has anyone attempted to use Microformats to encode something more > complex > like MathML and SVG? These are far outside the bounds of microformats. Also, you don't need microformats in order to use these XML dialects in XHTML. [1] -ryan 1. Some mozilla-centric examples: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/mathml/start.xhtml http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/SVG_In_HTML_Introduction From mdagn at spraci.com Mon Dec 17 18:20:33 2007 From: mdagn at spraci.com (Michael MD) Date: Mon Dec 17 18:20:38 2007 Subject: [uf-dev] XBRL, XHTML, Microformats and context-aware computing References: <62325ff60712171206s1892d73dr1fb772d50fdf670d@mail.gmail.com> <4766E415.6070505@digitalbazaar.com> Message-ID: <002001c8411c$91db7eb0$116bacca@COMCEN> > >> What microformat use cases call for strict XHTML validity? > > Microformats work with XHTML, (among other XML dialects), HTML4 and > HTML4.01. Validity isn't required for Microformats... they work in > syntactically invalid documents... but that doesn't mean that invalid > documents are acceptable. from a practical perspective: not all parsers handle invalid documents very well. From devi.webmaster at gmail.com Tue Dec 18 11:22:20 2007 From: devi.webmaster at gmail.com (Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney) Date: Tue Dec 18 11:22:24 2007 Subject: [uf-dev] XBRL, XHTML, Microformats and context-aware computing In-Reply-To: <62325ff60712171206s1892d73dr1fb772d50fdf670d@mail.gmail.com> References: <62325ff60712171206s1892d73dr1fb772d50fdf670d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <3bceeb2d0712181122m6bf24d47q3023f90fda7780d6@mail.gmail.com> Several people have already written how, as a standards organization, it is inappropriate to write a standard violating another standard, and how you can write tag soup and your own XML dialect as long as you don't call it XHTML. With that out of the way, you seem to be working on reports. Reports are documents, making them well-suited for XHTML, which is, by design, a format for documents. I'd be interested in hearing more specific difficulties or ways XHTML has been insufficient or overly restrictive. Tangent about your web site, which I understand you may have nothing to do with: Most of your pages use frames. None of the framesets are XHTML. Some of them don't bother with an html element. I have no idea why you wouldn't bother with a DOCTYPE and html element, but I am going to guess you use framesets so you don't have to play with your ASP server get nice clean URLs, which is good goal, but some people think frames themselves are a bad practice. http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200411/who_framed_the_web_frames_and_usability/ http://universalusability.com/access_by_design/frames/avoid.html (Not the W3C has given up on them) http://www.w3.org/TR/xframes Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney