[uf-discuss] Appeal for Issues: Empty spans in value-excerption-pattern

[Scott Reynen]

On [Nov 7], at [ Nov 7] 8:09 , Rob Crowther wrote:

>> Thus, this will parse:
>>
>> <span class="dtstart"><span class="value" title="2008-11-04"></ 
>> span>4th
>> November</span>
>>
>> But this will fail:
>>
>> <span class="dtstart">On 4th November 2008 Barack Obama was elected  
>> the
>> first African American president of the United States of American.  
>> He was
>> really pleased about it. <span class="value" title="2008-11-04"></ 
>> span>
>> </span>
>>
> I'm not sure I understand the benefit here

As Ben wrote:

> DRY is a problem when data is repeated in a document and risks one  
> copy of the data not being maintained in sync with another.

The benefit is to minimize this problem.

> will this also parse?
>
> <span class="dtstart"><span class="value" title="2008-11-04">Barack
> Obama was elected the
> first African American president of the United States of American,  
> and he was
> really pleased about it, on 4th November 2008</span>
> </span>


Not as a valid dtstart value, no.  The title attribute is only parsed  
when the value element is empty, so that would parse with an invalid  
dtstart value containing the entire sentence.  See:

http://microformats.org/wiki/value-excerption-pattern-issues#Parsing_title_from_Empty_value_Elements

Peace,
Scott