[microformats-discuss] Profiles, what are they good for, why do we need them, and how should they be implemented

Fri Jul 15 14:34:20 PDT 2005

On Jul 15, 2005, at 8:37 AM, Carl Beeth wrote:
>> There is no way to make a single profile for every
>> single possible XMDP that might emerge.
>
> OK fair enough but could there be another way to do it? maybe like  
> this:
> My pages point to one document on my site that in turn will point the
> xmdp's I will use in my site.

A couple comments:

1. What problem are we trying to solve here?
2. According to the spec the profile references URIs.

> I don't think you guys realize how quickly these xmdp's are going to
> mushroom. I can easily see a small private site having these:
>
> hCalendar
> hCard
> RelLicense
> RelNoFollow
> RelTag
> VoteLinks
> XFN
> hReview
> Robots Exclusion
> rel-enclosure
> xfolk
>
> And that is today, in a couple of weeks there might be more. That
> makes for a lot of URL's in the header.

I may be slow here, but I don't see what the problem with that is.

> Remember people are pragmatic
> even though they won't use all these formats on the same page they
> will put it all in the template just in case they they need it. Also
> you are putting a very large hurdle on adoption if the user has to
> muck around in his templates each time he want's to ad a new kind of
> microformated content to his site.

Once again, we've already covered the <head profile> vs. <link  
rel="profile" vs. <a rel="profile">

That feedback has been accepted and will be added to the XMDP spec.

-ryan