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

[Bud Gibson]

On Jul 15, 2005, at 11:37, Carl Beeth wrote:


> And that is today, in a couple of weeks there might be more. That
> makes for a lot of URL's in the header. 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.
>
>

Carl:

I find this point to very well taken, and it comes back to Danny  
Ayers' idea of using URIs to ID when the microformat is being used.   
If the URI were simply the URL to the XMDP, we would kill two birds  
with one stone.

In another communication, Ryan King indicated that XFN actually uses  
the URI as the class attribute value that encloses an XFN entry.   
Somebody with foresight of the problem you are describing made that  
decision.

One mechanism available now is to simply place a link to the XMDP in  
the microformatted text as described here:

http://microformats.org/wiki/xmdp-brainstorming

(the page is a little messy, but you should find it).  Short of  
adopting Ayers' suggestion, this solution at least allows you to just  
plop in links to the XMDP without having access to the head.

As I think about it, I like Ayers' suggestion more and more.  Maybe  
that will become a best practice someday.

Bud