[uf-discuss] Chat microformat/podcast transcript

[Christopher St John]

On 4/11/06, Jude Robinson <jude at dotcode.com> wrote:

> Hello all - I've been lurking for a while, so
> thought it was about time I decloaked with a
> simple question: is it possible that the (yet to
> be defined) chat microformat could be used for
> podcast transcripts, eg:
> http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/v440/n7085/nature-2006-04-06.html

anything is possible :-)

my personal need[1] (ref the archives) is for
something that captures the intimate details of
irc/im conversations. things like timestamps and
enter/leave messages and topic changes. that may or
may not be appropriate for podcast (or other)
transcripts. i suspect there are some common,
reusable elements lurking in there someplace,
though.

one of the cool things about the way microformats
are developed is the gathering of examples. that
tends to make it clear(ish) what the commonalities
are, and whether they're accidental or essential.

although i'm not a personl fan, there's a certain
amount of sentiment for using definition lists[2]
for conversations, and it does seem to match up
pretty well for the podcast transcript.

the traditional advice at this point would be to
start getting together a set of examples-in-the-wild
of the sort of thing you're talking about, and let
the examples guide the thinking...

-cks

[1] http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2006-February/002953.html

[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/lists.html#h-10.3,
yeah, i know, it actually says, right there in the
4.01 spec, that DL's might be used to mark up
dialog, but dialog isn't a definition, is it? i
don't like it. but that's just me.

--
Christopher St. John
http://artofsystems.blogspot.com
http://eventmirror.com