[microformats-discuss] Re: Educationg Others

[Scott Anderson]

On 10/3/05, Joe Gregorio <joe.gregorio at gmail.com> wrote:
> Scott,
>
> I asked:
>
> > > 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."" ?
>
> You answered:
>
> > 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 don't seem to be looking for answers but appear to be
> trying to stake out a position.

I am looking for answers on what standardized content formats to use
in my software and how best to make use of them for my particular
requirements. I am not advocating that anyone do what I am doing or
that what anyone else is doing is wrong. The only position I am taking
is that a technology or format is bound to become increasingly complex
and less usable the more you attempt to reuse it to solve disparate
problems.

I see microformats usefulness being constrained by portability issues
relating to it being tied so closely to XHTML syntax and context. I
also believe that a lack of common design patterns within microformats
will make it harder for developers to adopt and support it. If
microformats are successful I will support them. As it is, I need to
be convinced that there is a potential tipping point on the horizon
before I make an investment. I don't see it yet.

I realize that most people on this list are not facing the
requirements that I am and are not interested in providing the type of
solutions that I am interested in developing. I can also understand
that my criticisms may not be relevant to what others are doing.
Basically, I don't want to have to support two different XML formats
that describe the same data. I am being told that the XHTML used in
microformats is indeed portable. Has this been demonstrated to be
true? I have a lot of doubts that the context is portable or the
support requirements are trivial.

If I do need to support a secondary format that gets used to generate
microformats in my XHTML does anyone know of a good candidate for this
besides RDF?

Note to Danny: I will be looking into how to map RDF to my JSR 170
content repository. Let me know if you have any suggestions on how
best to approach this task. I would need to define some custom node
types. (http://www.jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/review/jsr170/)