[microformats-discuss] abbr-design-pattern

[David Janes -- BlogMatrix]

You'll note that in on the Wiki page I explicitly spell the human vs. 
computer issue:

| Use the abbr-design-pattern to make text that is human readable also
| formally machine readable.

In broader sense, there's two use cases:

(1) using ABBR to encode machine readable data around human readable data

<abbr class="dtstart" title="20051010T10:10:10-0100">10 o'clock on the 
10th</abbr>

(2) using ABBR to encode more formal human data around something less formal

<abbr class="author" title="Danny Ayers">Danny</abbr>

I think Tantek is arguing that (1) is good and (2) is not (?). I like 
(1) and I'd like to mull over (2) more; I'm not sold either way and 
would at least to hear an argument.

Regards, etc...
David
http://www.blogmatrix.com

Tantek Çelik wrote:
> On 10/10/05 1:47 PM, "Ryan King" <ryan at technorati.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>From http://microformats.org/wiki/abbr-design-pattern:
>>
>>
>>>*abbr-design-pattern should be avoided, if possible. RobertBachmann
>>>**why, or under what circumstances? For example, it is quite useful
>>>with datetimes. Should there not be other potentially analogous
>>>situations? DavidJanes
>>
>>I'm curious- why do you say this, Robert?
> 
> 
> I actually would tend to agree (despite coming up with the technique), but
> would phrase it differently.
> 
> abbr-design-pattern should be used only when absolutely necessary to
> distinguish the human readable text from the computer readable data.
> 
> And the reason being to better follow the DRY principle.
> 
> This is typical for date time related information, and some keyword values
> (e.g. "type" values in hCard properties), but little else.