[microformats-discuss] additional ways to reference XMDPs

Wed Jul 13 05:16:11 PDT 2005

Time out on the subject of more ways to reference XMDPs.

I'm behind on taking past proposed XMDP extensions and putting them out
there on the web.

LOTs of good ideas presented here, and I'm very happy to see that most of
what I discussed with folks earlier this year (e.g. at SXSW, at WWW2005) has
been brought up independently on this list by others.

In short:

1. Today the spec lets you use the profile attribute of <head>

2. <link rel="profile"> is another way to do so, and is actually formalized
in XHTML2.

3. <a rel="profile"> is another way to do so, and enables people to
reference profiles inline in content anywhere, and *visibly* as well, which
has added benefits.

These are all great ideas.  Thanks to Bud and everybody else who has
suggested them and confirmed past brainstormings.

I'm working on writing these up more formally as additions to XMDP.

I'll send something to the list when I've edited XMDP.

Thanks,

Tantek

On 7/13/05 4:36 AM, "Bud Gibson" <bud at thecommunityengine.com> wrote:

> On Jul 13, 2005, at 7:10, Tantek Çelik wrote:
> 
>> Let's focus our time and efforts on microformats on practical uses
>> that
>> exist today as much as possible.  If you really want, perhaps keep
>> track of
>> extra ideas like that in some side notes, perhaps a brainstorming
>> page.
> 
> Tantek et al.,
> 
> I'd like to bring the discussion back to its original start which was
> discovery of microformats and the importance of the XMDP.  The simple
> practical concern is to know that microformats are being used, which
> ones, and what they cover.  Here's what I think I learned in that
> regard:
> 
> 1.  The XMDP provides a great summary of the format that can be read
> by people as well as machines.
> 
> 2.  Pointing at the XMDP currently is the best hint that the page
> contains microformatted content because it is explicit.
> 
> 3.  A problem with using XMDPs is that the standard only allows for
> them to be linked from the profile attribute in the head element.
> People do not always have access to that.  A case in point is the h*-
> creators which create body markup but do not alter the contents of
> the head element.
> 
> 4.  A seemingly easy solution is to put an <a> element somewhere in
> the microformatted content that points back to the XMDP.  This
> fulfills the initial practical question raised initially but adds <a>
> elements, an addition some find aesthetically displeasing.
> 
> It seems another outcome of all of this would be to consider some
> simple extension to the XMDP spec that allows it to be linked from an
> <a> element with discussion focusing on how that would work.
> 
> Bud_______________________________________________
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