[microformats-discuss] Microformats, REST, and XML

[Ryan King]

On Sep 19, 2005, at 12:26 PM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote:
> On Sep 19, 2005, at 12:05 PM, Kevin Marks wrote:
>> Another angle on the discussions regarding XML vs XHTML, and  
>> touching on REST, is the context of use.
>>
>> If you are using XML to pass data around between your own  
>> applications and never touching the web, then the extra degree of  
>> control gained by constructing your own arbitrary data structure  
>> in XML may be worth it.
>>
>> If however, you are intending to send the data over a webserver,  
>> using a REST API, then using microformats in XHTML (and in  
>> particular XOXO) has many benefits:
>
> Fascinating.   This is one of the things I've wondered about. In a  
> world where everybody "grokked" microformats, would there ever be a  
> need for new (public) XML documents? Or could we do everything with  
> microformatted XHTML -- and, perhaps, Atom.

Tantek and Kevin talked about this last year: http://tantek.com/ 
presentations/20040928sdforumws/semantic-xhtml.html

Beware of broken links in that presentation, though.

> Certainly, I would think things like DocBook would make far more  
> sense as a XHTML application rather than their own XML schema.

+1

-ryan

> This is more than a theoretical question.   As you know, Mac OS X  
> uses property lists (the moral equivalent of XOXO, at least to  
> first order) for many types of data transport.  There's often  
> discussion about when/where an app should simply use a plist  
> dictionary for data storage vs. defining a custom XML document type.
>
> What would this list recommend as the best practice (assuming plist  
> = XOXO for purpose of discussion)?