[uf-discuss] Avatar Microformat ?

Thu Nov 24 12:10:58 PST 2005

Instead of narrowing the problem to letting users specify their own 
avatar, why not let them specify their own "vcard" (or the URI to that 
vcard), solving not only the the avatar image problem but allowing 
alternate ids depending on the context?

At this point, I'll mention a uF I started sketching out several days 
ago for "alternates" [1]. One could then have a page saying that "these 
3 vcards are alternates of one another" doing something like (under one 
proposal):

<ul class="alternates myid">
  <li class="vcard myid">... vcard 1 ...</li>
  <li class="vcard myid">... vcard 2 ...</li>
  <li class="vcard myid">... vcard 3 ...</li>
</ul>

("myid" is an arbitrary string). You would use <ol> if there was a 
preference involved.

If you then added 'id="vcard1"' (etc) to each of the <li>s, the vcards 
are individually URI addressable.

Regards, etc...
David

[1] http://microformats.org/wiki/alternates-brainstorming

PS. Since I misunderstood the question initially, I might as well give 
the vcard transformation I did on Planet Gnome:

<div class="person-info">
<a href="http://tirania.org/blog/index.html" title="Miguel de Icaza">
<img class="face" src="http://planet.gnome.org/heads/miguel.png" alt="">
<br />
Miguel de Icaza			
<br />
(miguel)
</a>
</div>

... becomes ...

<div class="vcard person-info">
<a class="url" href="http://tirania.org/blog/index.html" title="Miguel 
de Icaza">
<img class="photo" class="face" 
src="http://planet.gnome.org/heads/miguel.png" alt="">
<br />
<span class="fn">Miguel de Icaza</span>
<br />
(<span class="nickname">miguel</span>)
</a>
</div>

Charles Iliya Krempeaux wrote:
> 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/
> ___________________________________________________________________________
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