[uf-discuss] Citation format straw proposal on the wiki

[Bruce D'Arcus]

On 3/30/06, Tim White <tjameswhite at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I understand the desire to capture "type" metadata - I wanted to
> include it for the longest time. But - from a microformats point of
> view - we have to keep two things in mind:
>
> 1) Humans first, machines second.

At what point does this become mere dogma?  It sounds like what you're
advocating in fact suggests "human first, who cares about machines";
as if the one can't support the other in any case.

I once held a position that typing introduced more problems than it
solved, but I've changed my mind.  If we were to vote on this, I'd
give a big +1 to including typing information.

> This means keeping everything visible, not trapped in metadata. If you
> really want to note that it's a photo then include that:
>
> <cite>Photo <span class="title">Siesta Lake</span> by <span class="fn
> photography">Ansel Adams</span>.</cite>

Why not use CSS to style types in particular ways, or otherwise
provide more sublte cues?

> 2) "Adapted to current behaviors and usage patterns."
> Microformats are suppose to be modeled on what people are currently
> doing (80/20) on the web. I think of it in terms of the Everyman/woman.

"Everyman/woman" has no idea what microformats are.

> I think things like marc records, OpenURL, Bibtex, etc. are actually
> *too* specific for MF.

???

I see it quite the other way around of course. If you just want
something some generic weblog author can use to markup a book, and you
reject the idea of doing something more, then I have no interest in
this discussion I'm afraid; you'd be designing for a narrow community.

The examples that Alf and Mike posted are perfectably reasonable
compromises between simplicity and expressiveness.

Bruce