[microformats-discuss] adr and geo microformats finally written up

[Ryan King]

On Sep 26, 2005, at 5:12 AM, Danny Ayers wrote:
> On 9/24/05, Tantek Çelik <tantek at cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
...
>> We are deliberately NOT boiling the ocean of trying to specify  
>> what software
>> should do with each and every piece of data nor how to determine  
>> each and
>> every detail of each and ever piece of data.  That's a rathole  
>> that once you
>> dive into, you will never emerge from (IMHO this one of the things  
>> that
>> "RDF" methods/philosophies of solving information representation  
>> problems
>> are vulnerable to, and have repeatedly succumbed to).
>
> Hmm, yes maybe there is a philosophical difference between us there. I
> don't see it as ocean-boiling to make pieces of information as
> explicit as possible and hence machine-processable.

I don't think Tantek is saying that geo and adr shouldn't be used  
explicitly, just that the part of it should be deferred to others.  
Geo and adr are meant to be building blocks which can be reused in  
other formats and in specific applications. Just as with rel-tag, the  
scope that the microformat applies to is deferred to the application.

> That being
> orthogonal to what a piece of software that encounters the data
> actually does with it. Minimising ambiguity regarding what's been said
> strikes me as been generally a Good Thing.

Certainly.

>> The whole process is one of iterative, evolutionary improvement  
>> that eschews
>> solving all possible problems (i.e. complete a-priori definition  
>> of all
>> structures) in favor of incremental improvement of existing  
>> practice (i.e.
>> defining structures that are already humanly-obvious in the content).
>
> Ok, fair enough, I'm sure such an approach will have its benefits. Not
> having to have all the structures defined in advance has certainly
> shown benefit in the context of RDF, where, incidentally, something
> like "reviews of businesses SHOULD use an hCard to describe the
> business" would come across as shockingly rigid ;-)
>
>
>>> Sorry, I'm not entirely clear on this - would e.g. <p class="adr">,
>>> still be acceptable?
>>
>> Yes.
>>
>> That's what I meant by "the element name doesn't matter" in terms  
>> of the
>> microformat semantics.
>>
>> Web authors *should* of course choose the most semantic XHTML  
>> element they
>> can for each case, but that's fairly orthogonal from the microformat
>> representation.
>
> Thanks, clear now.

Great,

-ryan