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

[Ryan King]

On Dec 14, 2006, at 2:53 AM, Joe Andrieu wrote:
> Andy Mabbett wrote:
>> 1)  If profiles are mandatory (or implicitly required by
>> p*rser behaviour), what happens to people who cannot edit the
>> "head" element (blog or CMS users, for instance)?
>
> Without meaning to sound flippant, they should convince their tool
> providers to support microformats. It would take some effort, but  
> blogs
> or CMSs or whatever can either provide access to the HEAD tag or some
> mechanism for specifying which microformats are in use and adding the
> required profiles into the HEAD tag itself.

This sounds ideal, but I don't think its useful in practice. The  
result of this standpoint would be one of the following:

1. Parsers are strict about profile URIs, which leads to slowed  
publisher adoption.

2. Parsers are liberal about profile URIs, which leads to making them  
less useful.

I suspect that #2 is more likely, though bother outcomes are  
suboptimal for what we're working on.

> When new technology is deployed, there is generally a transitional  
> phase
> where it takes developers to make things work. Once the tools catch  
> up,
> even non-techies can be a part of it.  There's no real reason not to
> expect that transitional phase to be a part of microformats' adoption.
> My understanding is many of the tools out there are already working on
> some sort of microformats support, this is just another example of it.

What if we could skip that transition stage? What if a new technology  
could be implemented without people writing new tools for it? What if  
ordinary people could start using a technology without having to  
submit feature requests first? What if we just let tool vendors catch  
up later? [1]

-ryan

1. "Do /I/ know what a rhetorical question is?" (any simpsons fans?)
--
Ryan King
ryan at technorati.com