[microformats-discuss] Microformats, REST, and baseline semantics

[Dimitri Glazkov]

This was inspired by the "definition of semantics" thread. This is
probably something well understood by others, but I think it's worth
even if to repeat it back for students such as myself.

IMHO, a very useful quality of microformats (at least, the way I
understand them) is that they piggyback on semantics of well-known
formats (XHTML). This "secondariness" is what makes the concept so
beautiful: the carrier format conveys general semantics, while
microformats concentrate only on the semantics of a specified purpose.

It is important to state that microformats do not "override" the
baseline semantics, but rather complement/enrich them.

When I first logged into the #microformats chat room a while back, the
topic was "REST vs. Microformats", discussing an article that I can't
seem to locate at the moment.

It is only today it dawned on me that the similarity with REST and
Microformats is rather striking: both can be characterized as
architectural styles, and both strive to rely on and complement
well-known baseline semantics.

Even without knowing XOXO spec, you can see that it is a hierarchy of
lists. Similarly, a PUT request means that new data is added to the
server, even though you might not know what data is.

Does this make any sense?

:DG<