[microformats-discuss] Re: XML & microformats (WAS: Take 3)

[Lucas Gonze]

> On Sep 17, 2005, at 10:07 AM, Lucas Gonze wrote:
> > If you already have an application context which uses HTML, and you
> > want to benefit from third-party hacks, microformats are the one true
> > solution.
> >
> > The idea of replacing existing XML formats intended solely for machine
> > processing with the equivalent semantic HTML strikes me as irrational
> > exuberance.
>

On 9/17/05, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar <drernie at opendarwin.org> wrote:
> I'll go along with that, but I was asking a slightly different
> question (I think).   Is there any benefit to using the semantic
> tagging of microformats *directly* in XML?  For example, should the
> Atom community adopt "<link rel=tag>" or "<link rel=payment>" rather
> than, say, adding "<tag>" or "<tipjar>" fields directly?
>
> My impression was that Tantek was saying  "yes", but that the market
> (so far) had said "no."  But, I'm not even sure I'm asking the right
> question, much less whether I have the right answer -- which is why I
> brought it up.

I'm with the market on this.  I think that people working on things
like Atom would be wise to study and reuse microformat work whenever
possible, but importing HTML verbatim opens up a huge can of worms. 
Maybe it would be productive over the course of 4-5 years, but in the
short term the chances of creating a nasty mess are high.