[uf-discuss] Plants Microformat

[Scott Reynen]

>> Does a plant become something different depending on
>> whether it is in a garden or being studied by a botanist?
>
> Yes. It's care changes from how to tend it (water, situation, shade,
> etc.), to how to conserve it (grazing, habitat preservation, etc.). If
> it becomes a piece of timber, its care is about how you season and  
> store
> it.

Okay.  In hcard "fn" means something different if it's being applied  
to a company vs. an individual.  We leave that to applications to  
sort out if they care to.

> In the former case, the care regime is often a matter of opinion,  
> rather
> than hard fact.

The factual basis of the data doesn't strike me as something we can  
expect to formalize in a microformat.  Luckily, we don't need to boil  
the ocean here.

> Better to have a way of marking up a a species, or
> species-and-subspecies/ cultivar; and allow user agents to fetch care
> info/ conservation/ substance details from a preferred source.

That sounds like an application implementation choice we probably  
don't need to consider.  If people are publishing plant-related  
information that fit general semantic classes (e.g. "care"), we can  
apply those classes generally.  Where they fit more specific semantic  
classes (e.g. "garden water care"), we can apply them more  
specifically.  If they don't publish them at all, we can not apply  
them at all.  But microformats are explicitly not "an attempt to get  
everyone to change their behavior and rewrite their tools."  What is  
and is not included in the microformat should be derived from what is  
found in the examples, which Mark appears to be doing a good job of  
collecting.

Peace,
Scott