[uf-discuss] "Must Ignore vs. Microformats"

[Frances Berriman]

Thanks for the response, and the advice.

Frances

Tantek Çelik wrote:
> On 7/19/06 8:37 AM, "Frances Berriman" <fberriman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> http://cafe.elharo.com/xml/must-ignore-vs-microformats
>>
>> A friend of mine showed me this today.  Macroformats, over Microformats.
>>     
>
> The article is terrible and about 90% incorrect.  Unfortunately this is
> perhaps in due in some part to the IBM article which though decent overall,
> has some errors itself, and takes a walk through transcoding to XML and back
> which is interesting but perhaps unnecessary.
>
> The author of the "macroformats" article misses all the reasons that XML has
> failed on the Web, and all the specific design principles that have gone
> into microformats that were developed by learning from XML's failure.  In
> fact, he continues to push several of these reasons as actual *plusses* for
> XML (namespaces, invalidity, etc.)
>
> There will continue to be plenty of folks banging there head against the
> wall and trying to push "plain old xml" (POX) on the Web, and they will
> likely continue to see the same amount of success as they have to date.
>
> What we can do to be helpful:
>
>
> 1. Dissect articles like this into a series of assertions/questions and put
> them on the wiki, e.g.:
>
> * "why would anyone write markup like this? It brings exactly nothing to the
> table."
>
> Perhaps put such assertions/questions on a page like:
>
>  http://microformats.org/wiki/misunderstandings
>
> And make sure that each assertion/question has its own heading so that it
> automatically gets a fragment identifier permalink.
>
>
> 2. Debunk each assertion / and answer each question, e.g.
>
> Things brought to the table:
>
> a. The existing widespread knowledge, experience and toolsets of (X)HTML
> authoring as compared to XML.
>
> b. Ability to easily present to the user.  Cross browser support of
> (X)HTML+CSS rivals that of POX+CSS.
>
> etc.  see http://microformats.org/wiki/microformats for more
>
>
> Over time we'll debunk/refute/fisk such bad articles/posts to the point
> where anyone can reference the debunkings and respond to such posts with
> nothing more than a series of URLs.
>
> I know this may seem like a waste of time (like let people learn on their
> own, especially if they take the time to do such attacks as a comparison to
> homeopathy, sigh), but as microformats continue to grow in prominence, we
> owe it to the community, and to those who are new, to clarify misconceptions
> and misunderstandings.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tantek
>
> P.S. If you're just looking for an easy response to debunk most POX efforts,
> use this one:
>
> "Accessibility.  According to WCAG, when publishing on the Web you should
> use semantic XHTML elements (which microformats encourage) which
> accessibility tools have a chance of doing something with, not be making up
> your own elements which are meaningless to screen readers etc."
>
> The POX-crowd still have no answer to that, and it stems from the
> fundamental Tower of Babel / Namespaces mess which is unfixable due to
> cultural reasons.
>
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>