[uf-discuss] Microformats and RDFa not as far apart as previously thought

[Manu Sporny]

There have been some interesting blog posts by people at the BBC,
Mozilla and W3C about Microformats and RDFa in the past two days. The
first covers BBC's decision to drop support for the abbr-based design
pattern written by Michael Smethurst (who worked with this community on
hAudio among other things):

Removing abbr-based Microformats from BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/06/removing_microformats_from_bbc.shtml

The second is a response from John Resig, of jQuery/Mozilla fame, here:

BBC Removing Microformat Support
http://ejohn.org/blog/bbc-removing-microformat-support/

The third is written by Mark Birbeck, who is the guy that proposed RDFa
several years ago and is the primary one behind the processing rules and
architecture for RDFa:

Microformats and RDFa are not as far apart as people think
http://internet-apps.blogspot.com/2008/06/microformats-and-rdfa-are-not-as-far.html

We've had discussions that parallel the ones above last summer:

http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-new/2007-July/000592.html
http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2007-October/010850.html
http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2007-October/010859.html
http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2007-October/010879.html

I tend to agree with Edd Dumbill's post:

http://times.usefulinc.com/2008/06/24-uf-rdfa

Some are moving too quickly to dismiss both Microformats AND RDFa - the
two communities are cross-pollinating and there has been significant
lessons learned from both approaches. If you're going to blog about this
or discuss it - please don't fuel the Microformats vs. RDFa fire by
picking sides... it's detrimental to both communities.

Like Edd stated in his post, we have a bug that we need to fix (abbr
design pattern causing screen reader usability issues) and that has been
hanging over our heads for some time now. BBC's decision is a lesson
learned but is in no way some sort of sign that Microformats is on it's
way out.

Thoughts from the community? Anybody else blogging about this?

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny
President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Blacksburg BarCamp 1.0
http://blog.digitalbazaar.com/2008/05/15/blacksburg-barcamp-10/