[uf-discuss] Species microformat process

[Charles Roper]

On 02/02/07, Colin Barrett <timber at lava.net> wrote:
>
> On Feb 1, 2007, at 7:31 AM, Charles Roper wrote:
> > What does the community feel should be the focus for species at
> > present? Now that I know that the analysis of existing practice is
> > about the existing *content* rather than existing *markup*,
>
> That's not entirely true. Existing markup plays a large role in what
> is published. Obviously it's not all going to be standardized, but if
> there are some common class names and general structure that is used,
> that may be taken into consideration, especially a case where, unlike
> hcard and hcalendar, there isn't already a commonly used format with a
> spec already written out. In a case like that, existing markup becomes
> very important.

Good point. I didn't mean imply that existing markup practice held no
value whatsoever. I appreciate that using existing markup practice is
a sensible course of action where appropriate.

> The main idea right now would be to be discussing things on the
> brainstorming page. Read over Andy's strawman, debate it. If need be,
> draw up another draft, and another, until you can reach some kind of
> consensus amongst the interested parties. It may be relevant to "check
> in" with this list from time to time, but by and large people who are
> interested should be going to and talking on, the relevant wiki pages.

Understood.

> You might want to consider writing up a document that explains some of
> the choices you made to someone with only passing (high school level)
> knowledge of taxonomy. Are there other taxonomical systems? Why did
> you chose this one? How standard is it? Are people using any informal
> standards that might be more widespread? If they are, why did you
> reject them?

All good suggestions, thank you. I agree that the answers should go on the wiki.

> It might be helpful to add something like that to the microformats
> process itself -- I think it could be a helpful tool for specification
> writers to make them think about the document they're writing a little
> harder about exactly what they're doing.

I think you're right.

Cheers,

Charles


-- 
Charles Roper
www.sxbrc.org.uk