[uf-discuss] hCode microformat proposal

[Colin Barrett]

On Jan 24, 2007, at 7:30 PM, anders conbere wrote:

> All over the web there are code snippets and code examples, and just
> plain people showing of little programs they've written.  This data is
> typical acompanied by an author or list of authors, a lisence, the
> language type and version and various other bits of meta data.  This
> seems to me to be an excelent place for microformats.
>
> First as a way to standardize this collection of metadata which might
> help decrease the confusion over licensing and various other issues
> that plague online code examples.
>
> Second because this is data that in and of itself does nothing on the
> web.  It has to be downloaded, and run in various other applications
> to have any use.  Standardizing the format would allow for easy
> download, collection and use of this data.
>
> I wrote a little proposal regarding what I see as being a possible
> schema etc. at http://anders.conbere.org/posts/code-microformat/

The first step is not to write a schema but to create a wiki page  
documenting existing examples of pages. Microformats is about paving  
the cow paths, so one of the major inputs in our design process is  
seeing what's already out there.

I would recommend looking at various pastebin websites and some  
programming oriented blogs. Something else you might want to also  
consider looking at is lxr (there's an install for mozilla at  
lxr.mozilla.org).

> I don't have any real experience doing this kind of stuff so I welcome
> comments, suggestions of criticism.  Really I just want to attempt to
> get discussion started.

The best way to do that is to create the brainstorming pages and do  
the leg work there. Once you have numerous examples, the process of  
figuring out what's common and what's not can begin. Finding examples  
in the wild is the most important step!

Hope that helps,
-Colin