[uf-discuss] Tentative proposal: Sub-microformats to streamline common microformat patterns for simple data

[David Janes]

On Jan 4, 2008 6:02 AM, Andy Mabbett <andy at pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:
> In message <C3A2D4C8.1302%ryan at ryancannon.com>, Ryan Cannon
> <ryan at ryancannon.com> writes
>
>
> >Andy Mabbett wrote:
> >> We could simply declare, in the manner of implied-n-optimisation, that
> >> an hCard with no children ... defaults to the equivalent of the full mark-up
> >> as used above.
> >
> >I wrote about this more than a year ago[1] and created some wiki pages with
> >examples:
> >
> >  * http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard-implied
> >  * http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard-implied-examples
> >  * http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard-implied-brainstorming
>
> So you did - I even replied on -brainstorming. (I wish I could remember
> what happened to my memory!)
>
> As explained in my original post in this thread, I now think that the
> specific suggestion to use "vcard-with-no-children" is unworkable.
>
>
> >The largest problem we have to deal with is one Brian Suda's criticism of
> >the idea
>
> Aside from Brian's issues with your specific example, his key comment
> seemed to be:
>
>        Either #1 you are trying to save bytes (which IMHO is not a good
>        reason) or #2 you are trying to make publishing easier... so if
>        we are going to work under the assumption of #2 lets, try to
>        avoid the whole "HTML Bloat" discussion.
>
> While I think bloat *is* an issue (more specifically, a disincentive to
> publishers to use microformats), I thinks that the two go hand in hand,
> and that this proposal does address his latter point, of ease of
> publishing.


For what's worth, I think something along the lines of what Andy &
Ryan C. are discussing here is a good idea, though I'm loath to get in
a pissing match about "vcard fn" again.

Let me quote here something from a friend (who's had a fair bit of
success in small startups over the last few years) in response to my
question why he wasn't using XFN + hCard for a project:

| The biggest problem with microformats is that nobody gets it.
| If I tell a programmer its an XML vocabulary, then he says "gotch ya".
| If I tell a programmer its microformats, then he says "micro what?"
| There's a lot of interest in microformats because its cool, but few are
| implementing them because of the learning curve.

<span class='vcard'><span class='fn'>David Janes</span></span> is a
pretty damned hard sell.

Regards, etc...
David



-- 
David Janes
Founder, BlogMatrix
http://www.blogmatrix.com
http://blogmatrix.blogmatrix.com