[microformats-discuss] hOffer

[Ryan King]

On Aug 27, 2005, at 9:39 PM, Emiliano Martinez Luque wrote:

> Hi all,

Hi Emiliano-

> I´m new to the list please excuse my english (It´s not my first
> language and my english grammar and spelling tend to die when I´m
> tired and it´s a little late here).
> I welcome this proposal, it´s one of the reasons I joined the list.
> I agree that commerce is becoming decentralized and we are also seing
> small independent stores using blogging tools and tinkering CMS
> systems to offer their wares on the net (for example:
> http://www.questionablecontent.net/merch.php ). As payment systems
> evolve and internet access spreads worldwide we could expect this
> trend to continue since it is a cost effective way for small stores to
> participate in the global marketplace. The benefits of having a
> microformat for representing commercial offers are clear for matching
> sellers to buyers as well as for all other of behaviours we have come
> to expect from the web (recommendations, commercial products reviews,
> wishlists, etc.).

yes, yes.

> I would first like to suggest that an optional photo should be
> included in the proposal. And would also like to point out that some
> currency specification should be included too, since '$89' could
> represent 89 US Dollars, 89 Canadian Dollars, 89 Argentinian Pesos,
> etc. If we want the data to be machine processable this ambiguity
> should be resolved.

There are definitely great issues that will need to be raised at some  
point.

But, for now, I think we need to try and document how people  
currently *actually do listings* on the web. There's a lot of stuff  
to look at and collect.

As a sidenote, do we have any wikipages for this yet?

Let's take a look at current practice first (I'm sure people are  
posting photos and currency, right?). And feel free to add this stuff  
to a brainstorming page, once we get to that point.

As always, http://microformats.org/wiki/process is our guide here  
(and speak up of that document is unclear anywhere- I seriously wrote  
it in about 10 minutes).

-ryan

> Keeping with microformats philosophy of 'Designed for humans first and
> machines second' I can see problems with the data being separated into
> 2 different fields.
> ie:
> <span class="price">1.000,00</span>
> <span class="currency">EUR</span>
>
> Since it would be displayed as 1.000,00 EUR when intuitively it should
> be €1.000,00 .
>
> There is also the problems of:
> a) French (1.000,00) vs Anglo (1,000.00) representation of  
> thousands and cents.
> b) The currency sign might be at the beggining for some currencies
> (ie: $17) and at the end for others (for example Korean Wons. See:
> http://www.woori.com/planmall/elegan/Index.jsp )
>
> My first idea is that a simple parsable method could be to include the
> currency on the class value itself. ie:
>
> <span class="price:EUR">€1.000,00</span>
> <span class="price:USD">$1,000.00</span>
> <span class="price:CAD">$1,000.00</span>
> <span class="price:ARS">$1.000,00</span>
>
> The problem of the actual format of the currency representation could
> be solved then by parsing the text node according to the specified
> currency.
>
> Another option would be to have the value in the title attribute of an
> abbr tag, ie:
>
> <abbr class="price" title="EUR 1.000,00">€1.000,00</abbr>
> <abbr class="price" title="USD 1,000.00">$1,000.00</abbr>
> <abbr class="price" title="CAD 1,000.00">€1,000.00</abbr>
> <abbr class="price" title="ARS 1.000,00">€1.000,00</abbr>
>
> You might have noticed that I kept up with the different formats, I
> believe this to be most intuitive, since again, you can parse the
> price part of the title attribute´s value according to the currency
> specified.
>
> This of course can by changed by deciding on a standard (Either French
> or Anglo). But I can imagine a lengthy discussion on the merits and
> benefits of each one... :-)
>
> Well, those are my 2 bits, have a nice weekend.
> Emiliano Martínez Luque
> TheThingsIWant.com