class="hack"? Re: [uf-discuss] Comments from IBM/Lotus rep about Microformats

[Bruce D'Arcus]

On 12/8/06, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar <drernie at opendarwin.org> wrote:

> Um, maybe I'm not quite understanding what you mean by "model". Are
> you saying that there's no way to create a generic parser that
> transforms the microformatted data into a normalized form?

Not exactly. More importantly, that there's no extension model, so
that people are reliant, in effect, on this community to make the data
that is important to them visible.

> What you may not realize (I didn't at first either) is that
> microformats.org is -- by *definition* -- optimizing for a world
> there are only a "handful" of discrete microformats.  Thus, there is
> no point in worrying about the general case; there are only special
> cases, and a relatively small number of those.

But I think that what I've seen on this list is that this is a myth.
Every week, it seems, someone asks for a new microformat.

Bruce