title attribute and abbreviated classnames(Was:[uf-discuss]Currency Quickpoll: Preliminary results)

[Brian Suda]

On 10/18/06, Mike Schinkel <mikeschinkel at gmail.com> wrote:
> However, at the risk of being shot for heresy, has anyone considered allowing this?
>
>         <abbr class="currency usd">$5.99</abbr>
>         <abbr class="currency dkk">35.66 kr</abbr>

--- one of the main goals of microformats is to make data Human
Readable. Which means visible. In your examples the USD and DKK values
are no longer human readbable values - we use the <abbr> element alot
of the time to get the Machine readable portion way from users, and
give them the more friendly human-readble string. Jan 1st 2006 is much
more human readable than 20060101T000000+000000Z .... but with the
<abbr> we still have something which the users can see. (i that case
Jan 1st 2006). With your example, the USD doesn't really have an
equivalent human-readable value, well it does, and would be "$5.99" or
"35.66 kr", you even agreed that
">> I still think this is bad semantics.  I don't think "USD" is
really a title for "$5.99""

So hooking usd, dkk, or other currency TYPE in the class around the
whole value is not ideal, semantically or for human-readablity.


> OR (something tells me this is even worse, but...):
>
>         <abbr class="money currency-usd">$5.99</abbr>
>         <abbr class="money currency-dkk">35.66 kr</abbr>

--- from a parsing stand point, this gets to be a tricky issue as
well. Besides the reasons mentioned above, there is another issue with
'-' seperated values. What you are attempting to accomplish is to sort
of "double-pack" the value currency-XYZ, by saying that this is a
currency AND it is of a given type.

The trouble with this is that when we mint an XMDP file for the
microformat we have an enumerated list of values for each class. So we
would have to have a value for each 'currency-ABC' to 'currency-XYZ'.
If/When we add a new currency or a ABC value changed (not likely, but
hey, they introduced the Euro!) we would have to go back and edit the
XMDP and since parsers are to use that as WHAT are legal values, we'd
have to then extend/update the XMDP to account for the new
currency-ZZZ value, then increment the version number and all the
parsers would have to be update with the new information, etc....

it is much easier to say class="type" then leave the VALUE of that
element to be open-ended rather than an enumerated list of values.

the other bonus is that it doesn't force authors into one way of doing
things, both of the following are still valid:

<abbr class="type" title="usd">$</abbr>3.99
3.99<span class="type">USD</span>

> I'm sure there is something just so wrong about this, but part of the reason I'm on this list is to learn. So why not?

--- the previous answers were sort of techy, do they make sense? or
are you looking for a more concrete explaination?

I personally like this idea:
<span class="money"><abbr class="currency" title="USD">$</abbr><span
class="amount">5.99</span></span>

It has worked well for ADR, TEL, EMAIL in hCard and is also being
explored for UIDs.

<span class="uid"><span class="type">ISBN</span>:<span
class="value">1234567890</span></span>




-- 
brian suda
http://suda.co.uk