[microformats-discuss] xFolk 0.4

[Eran]

Hi Bud,

Thanks for the prompt response.

> First off, xFolk has now graduated to RC1 and is on the wiki here:
> 
> http://microformats.org/wiki/xfolk
>

I've noticed that a coule of days ago and I must say I like the xFolk
format. It's simple, to the point and does its job very well.

> using just the word "tagged" or "xTagged"?  At the time, there was
> some discussion in email about just what was being tagged. 

That is exactly my question but I'm not looking to tag anything that has
no URL as you suggest next.

> At the
> end of the day, in a distributed web tagging system like xFolk or  
> reltag, you need  an address to point to because the data cannot be  
> assumed to be on your site.  The way to do this for items on the web  
> is to point at a URL.
> 

Pointing to a URL is a good way to identify a resource but I suggest
that there's a difference between a link, the URL in the link's href
attribute and the resource linked to. The link is an entity on its own.
The URL is an identifier for the resource and can be used as a proxy for
the resource. The resource is the page or image or snippet of text at
the other end of the link. The object of the entry is the resource (or
by proxy its URL) not the link to the resource so on a purely semantic
level, taggedLink or taggedURL is misleading. Like I said this is a
purely semantic point that can be easily be waved.

> 
> Taggedresource seems less precise in light of this discussion
> as does  
> tagged.  And I do think we need to be precise here because in xFolk,  
> we are talking about things with a web presence.
>

As per my argument above, I believe that taggedResource is more precise
than taggedLink as it points out that the object being tagged is the
pointed resource, not the link. Think of a case where I would make a
reference to someone's bookmark, in this case the object would be the
link (his link, not mine).
 
> >
> > As a follow-up, I'd like to bring up a question: would it be
> > possible to
> > use class="tagged" on different types of elements? Say, an IMG, or  
> > even
> > just a SPAN? That would make it easier to tag rich-media objects in
> > their "natural form", improving the microformats readability for  
> > people
> > (when looking at a tagged image I expect to see an image 
> not a link to
> > one).
> 
> I see no immediate reason not to take the <img> element into  
> account.  This is a very good point.  

This part of the discussion actually brings up a more important argument
for changing taggedLink. For simplicity let's assume I'm using xFolk for
my photo tagging service. Following the microformat philosophy, I would
like to present the information in a way that's meaningful both to
people and machines. For a machine, a URL is enough to identify a a
resource so something like the following is enough:

<span class="xfolkentry">
<a class="taggedlink" href="http://example.com/image.png">my image</a>
<a rel="tag" href="http://example.com/tag/foo">foo</a>
</span>

But to a human browing this page this makes little sense. The following
alternative representation might work better:

<span class="xfolkentry">
<img class="taggedresource" src="http://example.com/image.png" alt="my
image">
<a rel="tag" href="http://example.com/tag/foo">foo</a>
</span>

Using class="taggedlink" on an IMG element doesn't seem right. Of
course, we can combine the two:

<span class="xfolkentry">
<a class="taggedlink" href="http://example.com/image.png">
	<img src="http://example.com/image.png" alt="my image">
</a>
<a rel="tag" href="http://example.com/tag/foo">foo</a>
</span>

Which works very well for images but might not work so well for other
media types (video, text snippets, etc.) 

> As for <span>, I see it  
> potentially having an identification issue as I discussed above.  As  
> a side note, in a discussion of semantics, <span> seems to be the  
> least semantic of elements.
> 

I only bring up span as a way to markup a arbitrary text snippet. I'm
not sure why I want to tag arbitrary text but apparently, I do. Let's
just say I want to tag someone's comments regarding some image. I might
want to be able to do something like:

<span class="xfolkentry">
<span class="note taggedresource">this is my note. There are many like
it but this one is mine</span>
<a rel="tag" href="http://example.com/tag/foo">foo</a>
</span>

I hope this helps to clarify my thoughts on the subject. 

Eran.

PS.
Mod: sorry for the double posts.