[uf-discuss] hidden microformats

[Paolo Negri]

Hi all

Sorry for late reply

I can just tell how I sorted out my stuff. For the tricky structure of
the divs I've just reviewed with the smallest possibile set of change
the structure of the page to have the content to build the uformat
included in a div which is really semantic now.
I wasted some hours doing this but now I can sleep at night.

I decided to provide uformats just where the most complete infos are
available. It makes sense for the user to expect complete infos where
they actually are.
My idea is "uformats will probably be where you would look to take
physical notes" Now you'll say that I can't tell where the users would
look, and this is a good point...

I won't provide partial uformats because I'm afraid of that the user
can be confused by different versions of the data for the same
event/person. I agree on that even a partial information is semantic,
but since now the usage of uformats is more like a
transformation/download of vcards/icalendar (and my application is
likely to encourage this type of usage) than an highlighting of the
semantic of the page, I just want to provide one version of these
objects.
I'll be happy to change this approach when I'll see more clearly how
uformats are going to be used and how the users will be helped by
browsers/apps in using them. I'll just keep an eye to have a sort of
uformats aware page design, just to be ready, even if I have to say,
excluded 2 tricky cases adding microformats to my content was pretty
natural.
I don't think I'm going to add link to uformats because I like the
idea to have them as a rich collateral presence of data on the page
more than a sort of resource that need to be pointed. Obviously this
is just my opinion and is related to this specific application
perspective.

Well, and in the end I have to thank you all for this really
interesting discussion.

Paolo


On 28/09/06, Drew McLellan <lists at allinthehead.com> wrote:
> On 28/9/2006, "Ben Ward" <lists at ben-ward.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >Perhaps the better solution for this would be to revive (and perhaps
> >conclude) the 'linking to a definitive microformat' idea which has
> >popped up every so often. In short, provide a rel value to contain
> >within an hCard or hEvent which links to the page with the full
> >information. Parsers are then instructed to follow that link where
> >appropriate to get complete information.
>
> That rather depends on whether the objective is to publish discoverable
> information, or to make published information discoverable. My primary
> goal is always the latter, with the former a noble secondary objective.
>
> >That's still a work-in-progress though, so my advice for now is that
> >as Ernie Prabhaker says, there's nothing wrong with having smaller,
> >less complete hEvents, they're still valid microformats. For now,
> >just make sure you're linking to the full page from them and if in
> >the near future a suitable rel value is designed to parse those
> >links, you can add it in with no destruction or reworking required in
> >your application.
>
> More than nothing wrong with - there's everything right with publishing
> smaller, less complete hEvents.
>
> If it's an event then it should be marked up as an event in the best way
> possible, regardless of the fact that more comprehensive information is
> available elsewhere. If I were to publish a list of some of
> Shakespere's plays, I'd still mark it up as a list even though
> Wikipedia has a more comprehensive list than mine.
>
> In the first instance we must be concerned with adding the correct
> semantics to the data we're publishing, not with how it may or may not
> be used.
>
> drew.
>
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