[microformats-discuss] Re: Educationg Others

[Ryan King]

On Oct 3, 2005, at 7:09 PM, Scott Anderson wrote:
> On 10/3/05, Ryan King <ryan at technorati.com> wrote:
>
>> On Oct 3, 2005, at 3:15 PM, Scott Anderson wrote:
>> If you're saying: "Don't use that, because if you keep using if for
>> different stuff, it'll get complex."
>>
>> Then I think that statement can apply to any technology.
>
> Agreed.
>
>>> I see microformats usefulness being constrained by portability  
>>> issues
>>> relating to it being tied so closely to XHTML syntax and context.
>>
>> And which issues would those be?
>
> It seems to me that preserving the context of a microformat instance
> is tied to and requires an understanding of XHTML functionality,
> vendor inconsistancies, new and deprecated features, etc.

Once again, some specifics would help here.

>>> I also believe that a lack of common design patterns within  
>>> microformats
>>> will make it harder for developers to adopt and support it.
>>
>> We don't have common design patterns?
>
> I see a few here and there. Is there even one commonality between all
> the formats besides being their being XML?

* They reuse each other (rel-tag gets reused by xFolk, hReview, etc).
* We're working on a datetime design pattern [http://microformats.org/ 
wiki/datetime-design-pattern], so that all microformats can at least  
agree on that.
* We extend xhtml in ways which are explicitly allowed by the spec -  
class, rel, rev (rather than adding custom elements or attributes.
* They all share the same design principles [http://microformats.org/ 
wiki/microformats#the_microformats_principles]
* They're mostly structure agnostic (ie, most don't care what  
structural elements you use, just which class, rel or rev values you  
use).

I'm sure there's more, and we'll find more as time rolls on.

-ryan
--
Ryan King
ryan at technorati.com