[uf-discuss] xFolk thoughts

[Brian Suda]

Thanks Bud for your thoughts. I know xFolk was developed
pre-microformats.org, so a lot of those ideas and discussions where
never documented into the archives.

On 8/27/06, Bud Gibson <bud at thecommunityengine.com> wrote:
> I agree with Tantek's sentiment to keep xFolk simple unless there is
> justification to make it more complex.  When I wrote xFolk, my
> intention was to have a format that would allow tagged links to be
> harvested, not so much to display lists of the links that were thus
> harvested with proper citation back to the linker and reference to a
> harvest date.

--- if that was the original intention, they i can't argue too much with that.

> That's great because people get what it's for without
> too much trouble, and as a result they don't have too much trouble
> implementing.

--- I agree, low barriers to entry are key. The two main points i
brought-up could be made optional - which wouldn't make it any more
difficult to implement.

> Now, I can see how that might not be satisfying to many, but I also
> think the issues of author and authored-on-date is outside the scope
> of xFolk.

--- i would argue that it is only outside of the scope because you
wanted it to be. The implied schemas from all your examples have a
Date and Time which you choose to omit in favour of simplicity. You
are modelling what people are ready publish, but you are only modeling
a portion of it.

> The problem with creating specific solutions for things like author
> and authored-date at the xFolk level is that you can come up with a
> billion implementations for each specific case.  Why would you do that?

--- i don't think i follow you here? how would xFolk specifying an
author and time stamp create a billion implementations? i would think
that the ability to nest an arbitrary microformat inside creates the
billions of implementations... now i have to look for hCard, but not
when it is inside an ITEM property, but if it is inside a location in
a vevent it is something different etc....

If your intention was never to add these things into xFolk, then that
is END OF STORY - no sense arguing. I was just confused at why things
that are present in all your examples were not encoded into xFolk -
and i think you have answered my question and now it is documented and
we have something to reference in the future.

Thanks,
-brian

-- 
brian suda
http://suda.co.uk