[uf-discuss] Comments from IBM/Lotus rep about Microformats

[Bruce D'Arcus]

On 12/7/06, Ryan King <ryan at technorati.com> wrote:

...

> >> Also, I'm not sure how 'people not getting their pet properties' is a
> >> problem specific to microformats.
> >
> > True. It doesn't mean it has to repeat the same mistake though. I
> > would certainly hope the HTML 5 effort would be open minded about
> > learning from all of the efforts in this space.
>
> HTML 5 has profile URIs and the specification is much more clear as
> to how they are to be used (thanks to Tantek bugging Hixie about
> that). I think HTML 5's current extension methods (profiles, rel and
> class) are sufficient.

Let's review:

Microformts are a clever set of conventions to reuse existing HTML
attributes to encode some sort of structured meaning.

However, using "title" to encode machine-readable content is pretty
much a hack. Title, after all, is really for human readable labels.

Likewise, using class to indicate both properties and, um, class, is
also a hack.

These hacks are no doubt necessary and practical in the context of
current HTML and I really have no problem with it in that context, but
it's precseily why there can be no generic microformat parser.

In a world in which one CAN consider adding alternative attributes
(HTML 5, etc.), it makes no sense to me one would simply say "no."

Bruce