[uf-discuss] Definition of Microformats

[Angus McIntyre]

On Tue, February 27, 2007 5:45 pm, Christopher St John wrote:
> On 2/27/07, David Janes <davidjanes at blogmatrix.com> wrote:
>>
>> ... someone's announced "hRelease" today [3]
>> using the microformats name and symbol.
>>
>> [3]
>> http://www.psnetwork.org.nz/blog/2007/02/27/microformats-govt-release/
>>
>
> Reading closely, it's not an announcement of hRelease itself, but the
> announcement of an attempted use of hRelease to mark up a press
> release[1]. It also notes that hRelease is not even a draft, and links to
> the microformats.org process...

If people start using microformats before they've even made it into draft
stage, that's going to litter the web landscape with parser-breaking
instances of things that don't conform to whatever the final standard
turns out to be, but which are marked as if they did.

While that might encourage parser builders to make their parsers robust,
it's probably not a good thing overall.

Would it be worth proposing the 'x' prefix for the early adopters who feel
compelled to use a microformat before it's done, i.e. 'xRelease' or
'xhRelease' for early iterations of what we hope may one day become
'hRelease'? That would let people play around with stuff (and generate
'examples in the wild') without posing problems for future generations.

Once a given proposal reaches draft stage, the class could even be
versioned, i.e. <div class="xRelease01">. This might permit anyone who
cared enough to attempt transforming old versions into versions that
conformed to the final spec.

Angus