[uf-discuss] Avatar Microformat ?

[Charles Iliya Krempeaux]

Hello,

On 11/24/05, Tantek Çelik <tantek at cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
> On 11/23/05 11:05 PM, "Charles Iliya Krempeaux" <supercanadian at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > Is there a Micformat for specifying a user's Avatars?
>
> Could you be more specific about what you mean by an "Avatar"?

Here's basically what I want.  I want to be able to specify a list of
avatars.  (I.e., I want to be able to specify more than one avatar for
myself.  And possibly associate metadata with each avatar.)

Here's a use case for it.  Consider Planet GNOME
<http://planet.gnome.org/>.  This site aggregates the blogs of many of
the GNOME developers.  Next to each post there is an avatar for each
person.  (Specifically, this site uses a special kind of avatar called
a Hackergotchi.)

Now, this site is running "Planet Planet" <http://planetplanet.org/>. 
And I know that it is NOT getting these avatar images from each of the
authors websites.  It has them stored locally.  And there is an
internal configuration file that associates avatar images with blog.

I think it would be better if it would let blog authors specify their
own avatar.  A microformat for avatars would help software (like
Planet Planet) get each person's avatar.  (If the Planet Planet
software could get a list of each blog author's avatars, and then find
the Hackergotchi avatar, and then use that... it would be "good".)

> Perhaps providing a URL to an example or two would help.

http://planet.gnome.org/
http://planet.debian.net/
http://planet.ubuntulinux.org/


> > Anyone working
> > on one?  (A Microformat where a user could specify a list of avatars
> > that one uses would be preferable.)
>
> If you're speaking of Gravatars for example, then hCard already solves this
> problem, as it provides the key pieces: url, email, fn, logo.

The problem with hCard is that it displays you avatar (on the page). 
It would be nice if you could "declare" your avatars without having to
display them.  I.e., maybe something along the lines of:

    <a rel="avatar" href="/image/avatar1.png">...</a>
    <a rel="avatar" href="/image/avatar2.png">...</a>
    <a rel="avatar" href="/image/avatar3.png">...</a>

(Instead of using <img> tags.)

> > (I didn't find anything in the wiki about one.)
>
> Try the search box in the left column of the wiki.
>
> When I search the wiki for "Avatar", I found it on one page:
>
>  http://microformats.org/wiki/blog-post-formats

Sorry, I should have worded that better.  I didn't find anything along
the lines of what I wanted.

> Which only discussed an example of an existing blog post format that uses an
> "Avatar" which *could* use hCard.
>
> But you're right.  We should at least provide a place to answer questions
> like "how would I represent X", where X can potentially be represented using
> an existing microformat.
>
> I've added Gravatars and a few other applications to a new section on the
> hCard spec.
>
> http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard#Additional_Applications

I think it is desirable to be able to specify more than just gravatar
avatars.  (For example, using hackergotchi avatars would also be
desirable).

For example, maybe something like:

    <a class="href-hackergotchi" rel="avatar" href="/image/avatar1.png">...</a>
    <a class="href-gravatar" rel="avatar" href="/image/avatar2.png">...</a>
    <a rel="avatar" href="/image/avatar3.png">...</a>

(I guess you could equally use the <link> tag for this too.)


See ya

--
    Charles Iliya Krempeaux, B.Sc.

    charles @ reptile.ca
    supercanadian @ gmail.com

    developer weblog: http://ChangeLog.ca/
___________________________________________________________________________
 Never forget where you came from