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

[Tim Hodson]

On 09/12/06, Andy Mabbett <andy at pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:
>         <div class="citation">
>          <span class="title">
>                 Running an ISP for Idiots
>          </span>
>          <div class="author"
>           <div class="vcard">
>            <span class="title">
>                 Internet Expert [1]
>            </span>
>           <div>
>          <div>
>         <div>
>
> There is a danger that "Internet Expert" might be recorded as the title
> of the book (especially if the other title attribute is not present)
>
> Several possible solutions are available to us:
>
>    1    Declare that, if the attribute is inside a microformat (in this
>         case hCard), then it always applies to that uF, but not the
>         parent uF (in this case the citation)

Surely 1 is the most logical?  The fact that the hcard title is NOT in
the parent citation block would surely mean that I could make the
sensible assumption that the title attribute for the hcard is NOT the
same as the title attribute of the citation.  It would be up to me as
author to clearly express what I meant by using correctly nesting
tags.

>
>    2    Uniquely name the first attribute as, say, class="book-title"
>         (compare to some of the proposed class names in the 'species'
>         proposal, which use this method to avoid other clashes).

The citation may not be a book :)

>
>    3    Use an additional wrapper around the hCard on an additional
>         class on the hCard), to indicate that anything within that
>         wrapper does not apply to the parent.

As for 3, this is already done in the example given.  The wrappers are
named hcard and citation, which brings us back to option 1.
>
> My preference is for option 2 - with hindsight, I would have named all
> the classes in hCard as, say, "vcard-title".
>
>
Naming all the classes with a prefix is unnecessary if you take the
view that a microformat is a small set of attributes for distinct
pieces of information.  As far as I know (and I haven't read every
microformat spec) there is almost always a root attribute which
defines what we are talking about - vcard, vevent, xoxo, the
exceptions are the rel/rev attributes which are defined using profiles
and can only sensibly have one meaning in a page.

best...

-- 
Tim Hodson
informationtakesover.co.uk
www.timhodson.co.uk
selfdescription.org