[microformats-discuss] Re: intro

[Tantek Ç elik]

On 8/14/05 11:52 AM, "Edward Summers" <ehs at pobox.com> wrote:

> 
> On Aug 14, 2005, at 9:00 AM, Brian Suda wrote:
>> I would agree that a Bibliographic Microformat WOULD be helpful. When
>> citing publications that are ONLY in print there is no URL to
>> references. Plus, there is extra data that is not always represented
>> in a URL, such as Page Number, Issue, etc. A good place to start with
>> this sort of data would be to model it after BibTeX references, they
>> have been around for a long time and are pretty solid.
> 
> I've been lurking for a few weeks

Welcome Edward!

Thanks for delurking.

> since I wanted to see if the COiNS
> [1] might have some potential as a microformat. COiNS is a relatively
> recent ad-hoc library community standard for embedding OpenURL [2]
> references in HTML.

While it is good to look at "how can this non-(X)HTML standard be
represented in (X)HTML?", what's even *more* important to look at is "how
are people publishing this information in (X)HTML on the Web *right now*,
and how might we map semantics of existing standards onto what is being
published on the Web *right now*".

Microformats isn't about translating all known non-Web formats to the web.

Microformats is about taking what people already *visibly* publish on the
Web, and marking it up with "well-known" semantics in order to enable better
sharing, discovery, indexing etc. of that already visible information.

If people are not publishing a certain kind of information on the web yet,
then IMHO it is premature to develop a microformat for it.

This isn't a discouragement of your efforts.  I am merely trying to make
sure you're using the proper motivations.

> If there is any interest at all I am volunteering to put together
> some documentation and examples for review by y'all. Some more
> practical information about COinS can be found here [4,5,6].

See what I wrote in my previous message about
 
 http://microformats.org/wiki/cite-formats

Thanks,

Tantek