[uf-discuss] Invisible metadata

[Jan Egil Kristiansen]

At 00:57 28-10-2005, you wrote:

>> On another note, I didn't previously mention any type on my address,
>> but it was imported as a business address for some reason, so I
>> wanted to specify the type as home.  I don't see any way to do this
>> without adding information to my content, .e.g <span
>> class="type">Home</span>, which is what I did.  It's not a big deal
>> for me, but this is the first time I've needed to change the content
>> of a page in order to add a microformat, and I thought it might be
>> worth mentioning.
>
>This is by design.  The point is that the fact that it is a "home" address
>is (meta)data, and in general, it's been well demonstrated that invisible
>metadata fails (especially when it scales, c.f. meta keywords).

I agree that metadata must be visible to stay correct. But I am not so sure that the visibility must be in the markup.

I have placed META NAME="geo.position" CONTENT="62.01285;-6.77604" in the HEAD of http://www.hsjonleik.fo/. (Given the precision GPS equipment I used, that should probably be "62.0128;-6.7760") But there is no way I will make nerdy numbers like that visible in http://www.hsjonleik.fo/forside.htm.

My geo metadata are visible at pages like http://geourl.org/near/?p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hsjonleik.fo%2F and I could link there with class="geo". Problem is that longitude and latitude is not visible in the URL, and to a machine, they are invisible in the retrieved page, too.

I will ask Ask Bjørn to put metadata in his pages. Then you can think of whether 
A CLASS="geo" HREF="link to the page of a point" is a usable idea.

http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?lat=62.01285&lon=-6.77604&scale=50000&icon=x is a page with proper metadata in the html HEAD. I'd like to be able to use a geo class link to that page. 

Direct numeric visibility of geo data almost worthless - I have coded "62.01285;-6.77604" myself, but I can't see if that is the correct position of the theatre. (I could tell you that is is a position in the Faroe Islands, though.) But when I look at http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?searchtype=address&formtype=latlong&latlongtype=decimal&latitude=62.01285&longitude=-6.77604 and http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?lon=-6.77604&lat=62.01285&scale=200000&icon=x, I do indeed suspect that my poition is wrong.

To conclude: Metadata must be visible, but numbers are not the best way make geo metadata visible.

Best regards,
Jan Egil Kristiansen at http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?searchtype=address&formtype=latlong&latlongtype=decimal&latitude=62.0207000000002&longitude=-6.77830000000002