[microformats-discuss] microformat for messaging/chat

[Greg Elin]

Greetings everyone,

I've made pitch to Kevin Marks that messaging/chat deserves a  
microformat because IRC, Chat, etc, are very much a part of Internet- 
based communication, especially among developers. IM is definitely  
mainstream, and IRC back channels are pretty common at events and on  
conference calls.   I think we've all seen a block of chat pasted  
into a wiki.

As many of you know, I've done some development of Manuel Kiesslings,  
ARSC Chat, which is a web-based chat client. In working with it  
recently I took a stab at outlining classes for style sheet and a  
microformat.  kevin recommended I send it to the list to being  
discussion. Here they are:

     msg_room
     msg_room_url
     msg_eventcode
     msg_generator
     msg_entry
     msg_who
     msg_date
     msg_datetime
     msg_message
     msg_status
     msg_viewstatus
     msg_tags
     msg_id
     msg_count
     msg_thread_id
     msg_thread_name
     msg_reply_parent
     msg_reply_top
     msg_permalink


After I did that, I discovered that ARSC has specific templates  
depending on the purpose of the message, differentiating between a  
System Message and Moderator Message, for example. (It's very nice to  
see System Messages in a different color. So here are those categories:

     System Message
     Moderator (or Operator)
     End-User (HTML)
     Me (behaivor message, like "/me smiles")
     Speaker (added for chat at live events)
     Note (similar to speaker, but maybe behavior about something  
that happens)
     Bot (should it be separate?)

Now within each of THESE groups, there are might still be some things  
to consider, like:

     whispered message

If you are curious for more information, I've posted an excerpt from  
a recently used style sheet for chat:
http://gregelin.com/archives/index.php/5


Greg Elin