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

[Brian Suda]

I would voice a few worries...

1) Dublin Core spent YEARS looking at metadata about 'things' and they
narrowed things down to a handful of properties. It has been
brought-up before to possibly model DC terms.

2) when you look for 'real-world' examples you will find "things"
everywhere. There are no shortage of "things"/"items" on the internet,
and while it would be great to model them, it is almost back to the
"boiling the oceans" senario. I'd suggest a more narrow topic than
"things" or "items" - otherwise i'd bet you'd spent alot more than
"tens of hours" on the project.

-brian

On 11/16/06, David Janes <davidjanes at blogmatrix.com> wrote:
> 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
> > > _______________________________________________
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> >
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>
>
>
> --
> David Janes
> Founder, BlogMatrix
> http://www.blogmatrix.com
> http://www.onamine.com
> http://blogmatrix.blogmatrix.com
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-- 
brian suda
http://suda.co.uk