[microformats-discuss] Evaulating RSS per the microformats principles.

[Michal Migurski]

>> There's already an HTML version for you to read in your browser  
>> [1], but the XML version of a single post (RSS in this case [2])  
>> is still a great place to store metadata
>
> Really? A better place than in HTML?

Maybe, maybe not - it depends. There's a *ton* of momentum behind  
serializing periodic content into RSS/Atom/whatever, from podcasts to  
native OS-level support (see below), so arguing for yet another blog  
post standard feels somewhat futile to me.

HOWEVER, I did mention earlier that what was definitely missing from  
blogs in general was any sort of conversation semantics. I don't see  
a mention of this on blog-post-brainstorming[1] or blog-description- 
format[2], but this seems like a necessity for blog-based, inter-site  
conversation.

[1] http://microformats.org/wiki/blog-post-brainstorming
[2] http://microformats.org/wiki/blog-description-format

Mail & news both have the In-Reply-To header, whose value looks like  
an address. Can a blog post microformat be as simple as this?

<div class="blog-post">
     <h3 class="title">title of post</h3>
     <p class="content">
         <a href="http://example.org/musings" rel="in-reply-to">John  
Doe muses</a> about a topic of interest. I however vehemently  
disagree, for many reasons.
     </p>
     <a href="http://example.com/ramblings" rel="permanent- 
link">permanent link</a>.
</div>

>> - and of course you can link to it (and so can the HTML page, and  
>> vice versa).
>
> But can you view it in your browser? Can it be styled in your browser?

Sort of.

     Safari's RSS view:
     http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/tiger_09.jpg

     IE7's version of same:
     http://bink.nu/photos/news_article_images/picture9241.aspx

     On applying CSS to RSS:
     http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2005/07/01/rss.html

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michal migurski- mike at stamen.com
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