[uf-discuss] hAtom and blog-post-* need some more work

[Dr.Ernie Prabhakar]

Hi David,

On Dec 31, 2005, at 9:58 AM, David Janes -- BlogMatrix wrote:
> I don't even have the slightest idea how to respond to this. I've been
> working on hAtom since August (hardly a rush), constantly soliciting
> feedback, documenting progress and descions, recently providing  
> code, and so forth. Now suddenly a new there's some new microformat  
> principles -- not appearing on the Wiki in any obvious place or  
> (particularly) the process page.

I certainly affirm your efforts to play by the rules and solicit  
input.  I think what Tantek may be reacting to was the perceived  
pressure to "formalize" hAtom as an official microformat.  I think  
you've done a fantastic job of documenting 'hAtom' per se, but there  
are valid concerns about taking it to the next level.

> I have no issue renaming elements in hAtom, as long as there's a
> microformats process that I'm actually following -- something that  
> I've
> seriously attempt to do since the second week I've been on this  
> list. I'm assuming the process is driven by documentation and  
> discussion, and not by personality.

I think Tantek's principles are useful, and I agree they should be on  
the wiki.  Are they? I'm not sure:

>> Just because other standards keep inventing new terms for the same  
>> thing,
>> doesn't mean we should.
>> We should actively AVOID inventing new terms for the same thing,  
>> even if
>> those "new terms" come from other standards.

Thanks for all your efforts.

-- Ernie P.

>
> David
>
> PS. Does someone want to fill in the RSS feed structure? It's  
> basically the same as Atom, with different terminology.
>
> Tantek Çelik wrote:
>> Though I definitely understand (and applaud) the eagerness to get  
>> an hAtom
>> format defined, things have definitely been rushed a bit, and  
>> there are
>> holes in the background research necessary to do a good job. Holes  
>> which, if
>> they were filled, would most likely result in quite a few changes  
>> to the
>> hAtom proposal.
>> For example:
>> http://microformats.org/wiki/blog-post-formats
>> 1. The formats page has yet to describe "basic structure of an RSS
>> document".  This is a glaring hole.  Given how much more  
>> established RSS 2.0
>> is over Atom in the space of "syndication", it needs to be taken a  
>> lot more
>> seriously than that.
>> 2. The formats page omits another old "blog post" standard -  
>> VJOURNAL.  I
>> believe Outlook supports VJOURNAL, and if so, greatly outnumbers  
>> all RSS
>> readers combined.  I've at least added a starter section for  
>> VJOURNAL:
>> http://microformats.org/wiki/blog-post-formats#VJOURNAL
>> One of the larger points here to consider is:
>> Just because other standards keep inventing new terms for the same  
>> thing,
>> doesn't mean we should.
>> Who knows why they invented new terms?  The simplest explanation  
>> is that
>> they just didn't know any better.  Did they do as much research into
>> existing standards? If so, then you should be able to find URLs to  
>> that
>> research which we should eagerly reuse.
>> We should actively AVOID inventing new terms for the same thing,  
>> even if
>> those "new terms" come from other standards.
>> The utility of hAtom comes from the 1:1 correspondence of Atom  
>> elements to
>> hAtom class names. This does not mean that the names have to be  
>> the same.  In fact, we should
>> be preferring names from previous microformats, and even previous  
>> standards
>> over new names introduced by Atom.
>> As long as it is made clear which hAtom class name translates into  
>> which
>> Atom element name, the goal of creating a 1:1 representation of  
>> hAtom in
>> XHTML is achieved.
>
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