[uf-discuss] very simple microformat for URIs

[Alf Eaton]

On 05 Apr 2006, at 17:24, Tantek Çelik wrote:

> On 4/5/06 2:19 PM, "Alf Eaton" <lists at hubmed.org> wrote:
>
>> On 05 Apr 2006, at 17:14, David Janes -- BlogMatrix wrote:
>>
>>> Alf Eaton wrote:
>>>> At the moment, microformatted URIs are generally marked up in the
>>>> href attribute of an <a> tag with a class of 'url' (hreview,
>>>> hcard) or 'email' (hcard). This works for URIs that normally have
>>>> browser protocol handlers (http:, mailto:), but not so well for
>>>> other URIs (urn:, info:, etc) - which are particularly important
>>>> in the context of a citation microformat.
>>>
>>> Ummm ... this is because one is identifying _this particular link_
>>> as having a well defined meaning. I.e. this is the hcard's URL, as
>>> defined by vCard. It's not saying that "this is a URL" or "this is
>>> a e-mail address", except within that narrow definition.
>>
>> Exactly - you're saying "this item's URL is http://www.example.com".
>> What we need to be able to say is "this item's URI is urn:isbn:
>> 1592530079".
>
> Alf,
>
> How do people currently publish such URIs as "urn:isbn:" on the Web?
>
> By researching and documenting some real world examples, we'll have  
> a better
> foundation from which to reason and make suggestions.

Generally it'll be just "ISBN: 1592530079" in plain text, or an http:  
link to a site that resolves ISBNs such as Amazon (the latter being  
what we're trying to avoid by using ISBNs in the first place).

Similarly for PubMed identifiers (PMIDs, the URI for which is in the  
form info:pmid/12345678), people will link to PubMed or an OpenURL  
resolver that can handle the URI.

I'm thinking at the moment that the best way to do this could be  
using an <a> tag with display:none, so that people can't accidentally  
click on the link.

alf.