[uf-discuss] Human and machine readable data format

[Scott Reynen]

On [Jun 30], at [ Jun 30] 11:11 , Jeremy Keith wrote:

> I disagree. I think that writing:
>
> <abbr title="14:00">5 minutes ago</abbr>
>
> ...clarifies the abbreviated form.

I think the problem may be clarified by actually writing those out in  
a sentence:

I arrived at work 5 minutes ago.
I arrived at work 14:00.

The latter doesn't seem human-readable to me.  More importantly,  
though, it may not be what the publisher wants to present to humans as  
the expanded form.  There are a few cases where we are specifying  
content syntax for publishers, e.g. phone type in hCard.  And these  
are all similarly problematic.  I think we might get closer to solving  
these problems by considering them not in terms of whether or not  
humans could theoretically read them, but rather in terms of whether  
or not microformats should be requiring publishers to publish specific  
content.

Peace,
Scott