Fwd: [microformats-discuss] Re: Educationg Others

[Scott Anderson]

[apoligies for any duplicate responses...orginally sent to list from
wrong email address]

On 10/3/05, Joe Gregorio <joe.gregorio at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/3/05, Scott Anderson <portletdev at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I am looking for format definitions that are not tied to the
> > presentation layer so that I can effectively reuse them in the other
> > layers of my web application as well as within XML content
> > repositories, various XML descriptors, SOAP messages, Atom feeds, etc.
>
> What do you see in XHTML that makes you think that you
> can't reuse it in ""other layers of my web application as well as
> within XML content
> repositories, various XML descriptors, SOAP messages, Atom feeds, etc."" ?

The key word was "effectively". By employing a namespace strategy I
have the freedom to mashup XML fragments as I see fit. You might be
writing clean XHTML documents with very little non-sematic baggage
associated with them. Myself, I am dynamically generating XHTML
content that is being personalized based on rules provided by the user
while also being tailored for the device being used to view the
content.

The XHTML documents that I generate are the result of compositing
various content-oriented and/or service-oriented document components
(portlets) together. Each portlet could have the functionality and
usability requirements of a google map. I have been seeing
microformats as a potential mechanism for these portlets to share
their data with each other via the DOM.

For my needs it makes no sense to persist these complex portal
documents in my content respository when only a small fraction of the
markup is viable and reusable. It makes much better sense to keep the
data content separate from the presentation content so I can
effectively present the same content in many different ways.

You may suggest that I use static persistable non-presentational XHTML
as a data source to my process of generating the dynamic
presention-oriented XHTML that I require. What would be the advantages
of doing this? If microformats are only useful in limited contexts
then their usefullness to me evaporates very quickly.