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

[Scott Reynen]

On Mar 30, 2006, at 7:48 AM, Tim White wrote:

> 1) Humans first, machines second.
> 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>

The "Photo" there isn't machine-readable.  I think it should be made  
it machine-readable with <span class="media">photo</span> or <span  
class="citation photo"> -- I'm ambivalent about which is best between  
the two.

> 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.
> Capturing metadata isn't what is happening by the 80.

The microformat *is* the metadata.  Few were explicitly saying "this  
is a person's contact information" before using hcard because it was  
implied by the context.  Citation media is also implied by the  
context.  A book publisher's citations are implicitly about books.   
As humans, we can make these inferences, so we don't bother  
explicitly stating them.  Machines aren't so smart.  Microformats  
make such contextual implications explicit to allow machines to parse  
the information humans can already infer.

Peace,
Scott