[uf-discuss] Addressing bits of information

[Scott Reynen]

On May 25, 2006, at 12:20 PM, Tantek Çelik wrote:

> There is already an easy solution that works for publishers (ID).
>
> Inventing a more complex solution will not result in more adoption.

My understanding of "HyperScope" would accomplish a bit more than ID  
attributes could.  While a standard means of combining something like  
XPATH with URIs would be a more complicated addressing scheme, it  
would allow more complicated addressing (e.g. I want every vcard on a  
page not part of an address tag, or the first paragraph within any  
entry-content), and it would require no additional action by  
publishers.  I think it would probably be closer to XSLT than ID.  It  
wouldn't directly affect adoption at all, but as someone who likes to  
play with microformat parsers when I have time, I'd have more time  
for such play if I could reliably delegate the extraction of the  
content I want to another tool with a single, if complex, URI.

Maybe that's a pipe dream, but it's one that would result in more  
microformat-consuming applications, which would mean more adoption.   
The easiest way to explain to a publisher why they want to be using  
microformats is to point to all the tools microformats allow them to  
interact with, so I don't think parsers and publishers can really be  
separated in any discussion of adoption.  Encouraging either one  
encourages the other.

Peace,
Scott