[uf-discuss] [Zen of Microformats] Two Fundamental Principles of Information Design

[Danny Ayers]

On 09/03/07, Kevin Marks <kevinmarks at mac.com> wrote:
>
> On Mar 8, 2007, at 11:08 AM, Danny Ayers wrote:
>
> > For example, <div class="family-name">Novak<div> etc. might work fine,
> > but imagine you later discover an established practice amongst
> > biologists: <div class="family-name">Microhylidae</div>. Turns out
> > their existing systems consider your Costellos, Novaks and Smiths as a
> > classification term, alongside Narrow-mouthed frogs.
>
> As their systems are astronomically unlikely to have wrapped their
> taxa in a vcard class, there is no clash.
>
> Can you stop just making stuff up and pretending this is a problem
> please?

Ok. But I'd be grateful if you'd look at:

http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/ppbook/extracts/coincidence.html

> > It's taking the responsibility locally by saying:
> >
> > 'we're ok to create a convention using class="family-name" because we
> > have mechanisms in place that mean other people aren't prevented from
> > using it for their own purposes'
>
> Yes, wrapping it in a container class deliberately chosen to be rare.
>
> > In HTML, profile URIs are such a mechanism, and preempt such problems.
> >
> > An additional benefit is that they use the web to good effect - the
> > URI can be dereferenced and further information obtained.
>
> Profile URIs can be used to do that, or as you illustrated, they can
> be used to cause problems.

Personally I prefer the approach of exploiting existing facilities in
the HTML spec (Meta data profiles) and following known good practices
in regards to web architecture over relying on an ad hoc
disambiguation mechanism which I don't believe is explicitly specified
anywhere.

But clearly we disagree, I'll leave it there.

Cheers,
Danny.

-- 

http://dannyayers.com