[microformats-discuss] Basic question about microformat validity

[Ryan King]

On Jul 10, 2005, at 6:20 PM, Michal Migurski wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In thinking about parsing microformats, I've been butting up  
> against a level of imprecision in the specs on the wiki.
>
> For example, in the case of hCal it's unclear from the examples  
> given at http://microformats.org/wiki/hcalendar#Format what  
> constitutes a valid hCal event. Do the tags *have* to be SPAN's and  
> ABBR's, or can they be DIV's?

Regarding your question above, there's actually two different issues  
here:

1. The Use of Span and Div:

<span> and <div> in (x)html are very generic and have almost no  
semantics. So, these are typically used in a last resort (ie, there  
is no html element or compound which would be more semantic).

2. Use of <abbr>

<abbr> is used in cases where we need to pass two representations of  
the same data element– one for human consumption and another for  
machine consumption. Of course, we only want to pass two version is  
we really must, but in this case, we must- human and machine readable  
dates are usually quite different. For the full argument on this, see  
http://tantek.com/log/2005/01.html#d26t0100

> Can there be multiple classes applied to elements,

Yes.

> or is '<span class="vevent such-and-such">...</span>' an invalid  
> hCal event?

not invalid.

> Is there a stable spec here, or is it still being settled?

Things are by no means completely settled, but we're committed to  
maintaining backwards compatibility, so it should be safe to start  
implementing things.

-ryan