[microformats-discuss] Carl Beeth raises an interesting point

[Joe Germuska]

At 11:48 AM -0400 7/8/05, Bud Gibson wrote:
>Joe:
>
>Not a bad suggestion.  However, I have never seen xlink really take 
>off.  Is there a part of that spec that you find most relevant to 
>this issue?

Well, Tantek's followup kind of makes the point, about heavy 
theoretical issues and the sometimes corresponding lack of adoption, 
I think!  You can tell from reading the spec that it's pretty much 
the anti-microformat.

But in short, the spec defines a bunch of XML attributes which can be 
used; specifically, the "class" attribute from the earlier example 
would be rendered as "xlink:role", with a URI as a value.

SVG uses XLink specifically.  But then, SVG hasn't really taken off 
either.  According to this page, Mozilla has some support for XLink 
syntax: http://www.w3.org/XML/2000/09/LinkingImplementations.html
(can anyone point to a page which demonstrates this?)  But at the end 
of the day,  I think the fact that the really sophisticated behavior 
demonstrated in the spec's examples requires DTD hacking is pretty 
much a death sentence.

Still, it seems like if all you want to do is add an attribute with 
this purpose to a link, maybe you don't have to reinvent the wheel?

Joe


>On Jul 8, 2005, at 10:49, Joe Germuska wrote:
>
>>>Basically, Carl is proposing something like:
>>>
>>><a href="http://thecommunityengine.com/webcites" 
>>>class="xfolk">returns xFolk entries</a>
>>>
>>>to specify that the URL returns xFolk entries to extend his point 
>>>beyond the purely hCard specific.  I was sceptical of this idea at 
>>>first, but now think it makes a lot of sense and might actually be 
>>>a good convention to adopt as either a meta or basic microformat 
>>>(can't quite decide which, maybe a new category meta-basic).
>>>
>>
>>I'm afraid that saying "check out XLink" will get a similar 
>>response to "doesn't RDF do those things?" but it's true that the 
>>spec considers this issue in great detail.
>>
>>http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink/
>>
>>Joe
>>
>>--
>>Joe Germuska            Joe at Germuska.com  http://blog.germuska.com 
>>"Narrow minds are weapons made for mass destruction"  -The Ex


-- 
Joe Germuska            
Joe at Germuska.com  
http://blog.germuska.com    
"Narrow minds are weapons made for mass destruction"  -The Ex