Re: [uf-discuss] Avoiding Premature Optimisation in ‘The Process’

[ryan]

On Dec 4, 2007, at 8:24 AM, Ben Ward wrote:

> As some of my recent messages will clearly suggest, I'm concerned  
> that we are becoming too quick during development of new formats to  
> leap on some of the optimisation patterns established for other  
> formats (abbr-pattern, include-pattern).
>
> We're starting to see situations — such as co-ordinates being the  
> expansion of a place name — where we seem to be thinking of the  
> pattern before we're thinking about the meaning of the raw HTML it  
> produces.
>
> I'd like to see the Process include something that perhaps  
> discourages or even disallows the use of optimisation patterns  
> (Include, ABBR, any others in the future) until after the first  
> sets of mark-up are produced and semantically optimised. Then,  
> where patterns do match the optimal mark-up and HTML semantics,  
> they can be added. Where they do not, then we identify situations  
> that require new patterns.
>
> My hope would be that by including such a step, we avoid  
> shoehorning things into the ABBR pattern that are inappropriate,  
> and force the entire development community to think about HTML first.

I agree that many tend to jump to using the existing patterns without  
clearly thinking about about what that means in HTML.

On the other hand, the patterns are things we've found common to  
several formats and could be considered microformats Good Practice  
(used appropriately), so I don't want to outright discourage the use  
of things like abbr-pattern, but just make it more clear how to use  
it well.

-ryan