[uf-discuss] Regarding Profile URIs and Disambiguation (wasComments from IBM/Lotus rep about Microformats)

[Mike Schinkel]

Scott Reynen wrote:
> But I also think it's both a rare and a bad practice to 
> use one symbol to communicate two different ideas 
> in a single context.

It may be rare in the use-cases you've seen, but in content that I expect to
be publishing soon it will be the norm, not just isolated special cases.

> here's what you can do to solve this problem whenever you 
> encounter it:
> 1) add profiles for both vcard and region-data, e.g.:
> 2) add prefixes to all your region-data tags when you decide 
> to add the conflicting hCard names, e.g.:
> 3) designate that prefix in a meta tag, e.g.:
> 4) convince developers of region-data parsers to look for prefixes

That works in the context of a known microformat vs. "semantic markup" in
the wild, but does not work between two semantic markups in the wild that
are unknown to each other at the time of definition.  

Further, it imposes a burden on the semantic markup definer and the content
author of needing to prefix all markup instead of just the markup that
conflicts in a given HTML document (my proposal would make it a known
standard that prefixes on sub-elements are only required for
disambiguation.) 

And lastly it only works for those who have access to the HTML element; with
the proliferation of hosted blogs, wikis, and forums, people are
decreasingly able to annotate the HTML element.

> Nonetheless, in the interest of ending this discussion...

At this point it's become clear to me that the Microformat community is not
interested in addressing the issue.  Although I wish that were not the case
and I do believe it will do harm to the web, I will nonetheless relent and
respect the decision.  I am noodling an alternate way to solve the problem
that might be more palatable, and once I get it clarified enough to write
down I will propose it to the Microformat community.

> Now you can go crazy with your double entendre markup 

Just curious, what did you mean by "double entendre markup?"

-- 
-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org/