[uf-discuss] Should microformat features (like rel-tag) have explicit scope?

[Derrick Lyndon Pallas]

If I have a parser that only knows (and only cares about) the rel-tag 
format, it will be confused by people that use rel-tag for the category 
property in hCard. It seems unreasonable that every microformat should 
have to know about every other microformat, especially when they are nested.

Would it be wise to have a scoping mechanism explicitly defined? E.g., 
it the following fragment, "bar" is a tag for the document whereas "foo" 
is a tag for the xFolk entry.

  <a rel="tag" href="http://example.com/bar">bar</a>
  <div class="xfolkentry">
      <a class="taggedlink" 
href="http://microformats.org">microformats</a> is
      <a rel="tag" href="http://example.com/foo">foo</a>
  </div>

however, this barrier is only known if the parser knows about xFolk. 
More explicitly,

  <a rel="tag" href="http://example.com/bar">bar</a>
  <div class="xfolkentry uf">
      <a class="taggedlink" 
href="http://microformats.org">microformats</a> is
      <a rel="tag" href="http://example.com/foo">foo</a>
  </div>

the @class=~"uf" above indicates that the @class=~"xfolkentry" element 
contains a microformat, even if my rel-tag parser doesn't know which one 
or how to interpret it. The benefit is that it knows not to interpret 
rel-tags inside this element if it doesn't understand the class itself.

Problem solved.Now, say that there is a format (hFoo) that can contain 
hCard and any rel-tag inside the hCard should apply to hFoo as well. 
Since hFoo explicitly knows about hCard, it can ignore the @class=~"uf" 
directive attached to the hCard. However, a simple rel-tag processor 
that doesn't understand hCard will not process the element. Thus, 
everyone is happy. ~D