[uf-discuss] Currency Quickpoll: Preliminary results

[Mike Schinkel]

Thanks for the clarification.

Further questions (and forgive me if I missed any of this before I joined):

>> Currency symbol identification

This is a naïve question: Doesn't the ISO 4217 code *imply* a symbol?  It
appears so here: http://www.xe.com/symbols.htm  Doesn't including this in
the microformat create redundancy?

Alternately, can't the symbols be extracted as not being alphanumeric
characters?

>>  Global currency definition

I wouldn't have guessed that meaning; I thought your were talking worldwide,
not document scope. :)  So how would you mark up
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_spt_s1_d.htm ?  Can you show the
actual HTML to help me better understand?  (not for the entire file, just a
snippet.)

>> we would mark up 25 and twenty-five as amount so that it can easily be
extracted from the rest of the string. With a numerical value it may not be
necessary, with a textual representation, it may be necessary. 

It would seem to me that you wouldn't want to burden the HTML author with
marking up the number when it is already there, but would want to when it is
a textual representation, IMO anyway.

Broader Question: 
Isn't the idea behind Microformats to be as consise, cohesive, and single
purposed as possible?  If so, wouldn't that argue for "combination with
units (ex. $34 per gallon, $2 per miles)" being out of scope and begging the
need for a microformat that allows unit designation, i.e. hUnits?  For
example, one of the things that needs to be addressed IMO in a microformat
for "products" is units. Take software for example; a specific software
license can represent licensing for one server and five client access
licenses: 1 server/license AND 5 client-access/license. For automobile
parts, one box of spark plugs could contain 8 spark plugs: 8 spark
plugs/box.  And so on (IOW, currency is not involved.)  

JMTCW, but the more complex a microformat, the less likely someone will go
to the effort of implementing it unless they have a very compelling specific
reason at the moment to implement it (IOW, complex microformats will
minimize the number of times people implement "just because all the 'A'
listers are recommending it and because it might be useful one day.")  The
currency proposal at
http://microformats.org/wiki/currency-brainstorming#Andy_Mabbett just seems
really complex to me (but maybe it has to be.)

Anyway, I made a proposal here:
http://microformats.org/wiki/currency-brainstorming#Mike_Schinkel with the
idea of trying to minimize the burden placed on the author of the HTML, and
only use lots of markup in the exceptional cases.

My last thought on the subject, is why are we using full names for currency
and amount instead of "cur" and "amt" to minimize bloat when hCard uses
names like "fn?"

-Mike
P.S. Being new here, hope I'm not stepping on any toes.

-----Original Message-----
From: microformats-discuss-bounces at microformats.org
[mailto:microformats-discuss-bounces at microformats.org] On Behalf Of
Guillaume Lebleu
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2006 6:47 PM
To: Microformats Discuss
Subject: Re: [uf-discuss] Currency Quickpoll: Preliminary results

Mike Schinkel wrote:
> * Currency symbol identification "from other part of the text"
>   
This means that in "$25 dollars", we would mark up "$" as the currency
symbol. See http://microformats.org/wiki/currency-brainstorming#Andy_Mabbett
under symbol bullet for an explanation of this.
> * "Global" currency definition
>   
This means that a currency can be defined once in the document (just like
you define once a global variable in a program) and then refer to when
needed, instead of locally defined every time.  See for instance: 
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_spt_s1_d.htm where there is a
global legend "Products in Cents per Gallon", and then the numbers have no
currency symbol.
> * Amount identification "from other part of the text"
>   
This means that in "$25 dollars" or "twenty five USD dollars", we would mark
up 25 and twenty-five as amount so that it can easily be extracted from the
rest of the string. With a numerical value it may not be necessary, with a
textual representation, it may be necessary. So, depending on the scope of
the proposal (do we want to support textual, another feature choice in the
poll), this may be a related important feature or not.

Hope this helps.

Guillaume



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