[uf-discuss] hThing microformat ... or design pattern

[David Janes]

Any takers? I'm willing to start putting together an -examples and
-brainstorming page, but I don't want to invest tens of hours in the
project if people think it's semi-stupid or "we consider that but then
we figured out it was a bad idea".

hItem is probably a better name indeed.

Regards, etc...
David

On 11/14/06, James Darling <james at abscond.org> wrote:
> I have been having such thoughts, although I had hItem in my mind.
> I pretty much had the same justifications in my head as David has
> laid out. I was also thinking I wasn't sure much more base was
> covered by this then hListing and hReview, as selling and reviewing
> are, from what I can think of right now, are the only two things
> you'd do with an item description on the internet.
> On the other hand, it does seem nice in my head to mark something as
> an item first, and then add reviews or prices or hcards onto that
> item, linking them together. But maybe it's just a weird desire
> rather than an actually helpful thing.
> So this is basically saying I've had the same kind of thoughts, but I
> personally hadn't come to a conclusion about it.
> What are other's thoughts? (I have googled, but I would not be
> surprised to be told this has all been discussed before, in which
> case, any links to a justification against?)
>
> James
>
> On 14 Nov 2006, at 13:27, David Janes wrote:
>
> > I'd like to broach the topic of a "thing" microformat (or design
> > pattern). I don't believe this is a "boiling the ocean" type of topic
> > and I'll outline what I've been thinking about and how it would be
> > used
> >
> > (1) This would be a simple container "hthing" with all the elements
> > from vCard that would make sense -- fn, url and photo in particular;
> > geo and adr also for things that are in a particular place. I.e. this
> > proposal is fully based on hCard
> >
> > (2) This would be the basis for future "thing" microformats. For
> > example, this morning a "wine" microformat was proposed. If there was
> > a hThing microformat, there would be a solid basis for just extending
> > that with information specific to the wine world; likewise, one could
> > see this being of great use for making car microformats or housing
> > microformats that would be used with hListing [1].
> >
> > (3) This would fit nicely into existing microformats and may even be
> > an improvement. For example, in hReview [2] there's an explicit
> > container for the people and places being reviewed, but not for
> > things. By having such a container, we ensure that attributes of the
> > thing being reviewed associate with the thing rather than the review
> > (that is, a car being reviewed has 4-wheel drive, not the review has 4
> > wheel drive; although this is obvious to us it may not be obvious to a
> > machine reader)
> >
> > (4) This may just be a design pattern -- that is, a template for
> > create new microformats in the future. We do see this pattern in use
> > in several places, including the microformats mentioned above.
> > However, I would argue that there's a real benefit for today's
> > parser's knowing there's a thing there, if if future progress means
> > the parser doesn't know what all the attributes are (just the  most
> > important ones)
> >
> > (5) If it is a microformat, how we identify the type of thing is an
> > open question -- we could do it like phone number types in hCard or it
> > could be a new class element (or both). The type option is nice
> > because it means we can cover a lot of ground without creating new
> > microformats.
> >
> > (6) There's obviously lots of things that could be added to a hThing
> > microformat that are reusable across many types of things (just
> > sketching here):
> >
> > <span class="hthing">
> > <span class="fn">
> > <span class="company">Rosemount Estates</a>
> > <span class="product">Diamond Label</a>
> > <span class="generic">Cabernet Sauvignon</a>
> > (<span class="type">wine</span>)
> > </span>
> > </span>
> >
> > <span class="hthing">
> > <span class="fn">
> > <span class="company">Mazda</a>
> > <span class="product">Tribute</a>
> > <span class="generic">SUV</a>
> > (<span class="type">automobile</span>)
> > </span>
> > </span>
> >
> > Regards, etc...
> > David
> >
> > [1] http://microformats.org/wiki/hlisting
> > [2] http://microformats.org/wiki/hreview
> > _______________________________________________
> > microformats-discuss mailing list
> > microformats-discuss at microformats.org
> > http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
>
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-- 
David Janes
Founder, BlogMatrix
http://www.blogmatrix.com
http://www.onamine.com
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