[microformats-discuss] Discovery of microformats

[Ryan King]

On Jul 13, 2005, at 2:13 AM, Danny Ayers wrote:
> On 7/13/05, Eran <limbo at speakeasy.net> wrote:
>>> I believe Brian Suda was working on a parser/validator for xmdp.
>>>
>>> However, as I'm sure you've noticed, the real guts of an xmdp
>>> are the
>>> prose descriptions of the elements. So, just like other
>>> microformats,
>>> xmdp is for "humans first and machines second."
>>>
>
> Well yes, that's a nice slogan, but I've yet to see a microformat used
> without machine involvement. XHTML+CSS can already provide
> human-readable representations of information, what I believe
> microformats bring to the table is a way of making that information
> explicit in a machine-readable form.

You're right- we let machines into the microformats party from time  
to time. :) But, as a design principle "humans first, machines  
second" helps us keep focused on developing technology that can be  
easily comprehended and composed by mere mortals.

-ryan