[microformats-discuss] FW: [process] and blog-description-format

[Ryan King]

On Jul 23, 2005, at 2:27 PM, Tantek Çelik wrote:

> Regarding:
>
>  http://microformats.org/wiki/blog-description-format
>
> I have just gotten a chance to take a look at it, and left a few  
> comments on
> the wiki page, but realized I should provide more explicit feedback  
> points
> here on the list to encourage folks to better follow the microformat
> principles/process.
>
>
> In general:
>
> PLEASE read http://microformats.org/wiki/process before and  
> *during* any
> proposal of any microformat.
>
> If there's anywhere that the process and principles seem unclear,
> please feel free to ask.

I'd just like to add some emphasis on the "solve a real problem"...

This means that we must:

1. Identify an existing problem
2. Show that it hasn't been solved
3. Look at ways people have tried to solve it


And specifically on #2, I think there's a lot of prior art that you  
need to grapple with (and the burden of proof is on the new proposal  
to show that previous efforts have not been succesful):

> Blog URI (e.g: http://example.org/ )

we have rel= "permalink", though I don't think this is a formal  
microformat (ie, there's no spec), still still in common use  
(according to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permalink, its been  
in use since at least 2000).

> Lanuage used for the blog, read-able by machines (e.g: "en-US" or  
> "de")

In html and xhml 1, there's a lang attribute and in xhtml 1.1,  
there's an xml:lang attribute.

See:
1. http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/dirlang.html
2. http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/#C_7
3. http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-lang/

> Topics covered by the blog

This is certainly an open problem.

> A short description

I don't know of a solution to this.

> Available feeds

Its common to use <link rel="alternate" href="..." /> and <a  
rel="alternate" href="...">...</a>, so I think this might be a solved  
problem.

> A small logo image

What about favicons - I believe favicon files can actually have  
several sizes in them, not just the 16x16 (or whatever the tiny size  
is).

> Details about the author(s)
> Name (e.g: "John Doe")
> Contact details
> Geographical Location

<address class="vcard"></address>

see: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html#h-7.5.6

and http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard

-ryan