URI profiles [was RE: [uf-discuss] Comments from IBM/Lotus rep about Microformats]

[Scott Reynen]

On Dec 13, 2006, at 1:40 AM, Joe Andrieu wrote:

> Making people use them is not the same as clarifying in a spec what
> should be done, must be done, and what is optional.  If we are
> specifying that parsers can ignore non-profiled semantic HTML that  
> looks
> like microformats, we are essentially saying parsers can ignore
> non-profiled microformats, since you can't tell the difference. Which
> means that URI profiles are /effectively/ required if you want to be
> assured that standards-compliant parsers will pick them up your
> microformats.
>
> Yea!  I think profiles are great.  So, why not formalize the
> requirement?

So profile URIs are described here:

http://microformats.org/wiki/profile-uris

where it says:

"it is ACCEPTED that each microformat should have a profile URI."

I agree it would help to make that more clear, but if you're  
suggesting we change that "should" to a "must," I'd ask you what  
practical benefit you expect publishers would gain from such a  
change.  We're trying to avoid solving hypothetical problems here,  
and I don't see a practical problem profile URIs solve yet, as I  
haven't noticed anyone using class="vcard" to designate their  
Valentine's Day cards or anything else other than hCard.  If you're  
interested in seeing wider adoption of profile URIs, I'd recommend  
work on filling in the XMDPs for every microformat, because it  
wouldn't make much sense to require publishers to point to profiles  
which don't exist.

Peace,
Scott