[microformats-discuss] The adoption of syndication feeds -> microformats

[brian suda]

Mark Pilgrim wrote:

>FOAF is not the best analogy, .... FOAF data is an entirely separate file that can't be easily browsed by humans, so it inevitably falls out of date as humans update the stuff
>people can see and ignore everything else.  I know I had this problem when I maintained a FOAF file.
>  
>
Just a side note, but if you combine Microformats (specifically hCard
and XFN) with GRDDL, it would be possible to generate a most of the FoaF
content dynamically. You could take the XSLTs from hCard and alter the
output to generate RDF instead of ascii (.vcf). This would prevent the
data drift from non-human readable content because it is being driven by
a public, human-readable, easily updatable, HTML source.

So microformats can be used in GRDDL to help bridge the gap between the
Semantic Web and the "non-semantic? web".

If you are having trouble wrapping your head around what microformats
are don't worry, if you loathe the idea of using XHTML, you can always
transform it to your own flavour of XML (and back). Microformats give
you added semantics from which you can glean information for other purposes.

-brian