[uf-discuss] Microformats vs XML

[Mark Rickerby]

> So what I'm looking for are various discussions on what microformats
> accomplish that XML language formats don't do as well given the goals of
> microformats.
>

It's worth considering that microformats can be embedded in any XML
document where (X)HTML can be used...

From: http://microformats.org/wiki/

<quote>

Semantic HTML Design Principles

XHTML is built on XML, and thus XHTML based formats can be used not
only for convenient display presentation, but also for general purpose
data exchange. In many ways, XHTML based formats exemplify the best of
both HTML and XML worlds.

</quote>

As far as I can tell, it's a whole lot easier to embed HTML in content
enclosed by XML formats like Atom or RDF/RSS, rather than the other
way round.

Also, with regards to the earlier point about Dublin Core - the DC
standard is mostly about specifying an set of metadata elements to
record information about items in a large collection of content. So it
is similar to Microformats like hReview in some respects, though more
general, and more complex. But DC elements are not specifically tied
to XML syntax, they could be serialized in any number of ways (same
goes for RDF too).

I see the main contrast being in terms of generality vs specificity.
Each Microformat is targeted at a single specific problem, and
attempts to solve it in a simple way focusing on common use cases.
Many other formats (RDF in particular) are designed to solve general
and much broader problems across a range of domains.

Hope this helps.

/Mark