[uf-discuss] Benefits of Microformats

[Brian Suda]

On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 12:30 PM, George Brocklehurst
<george.brocklehurst at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I think almost anything you'd like to put into a microformat you could
>> make something with a "full" format. hCard.. you could just make a simple
>> vCard file. hCalendar? Make an icalendar file you update and link to it. The
>> advantage to NOT using microformats is that you can use almost any
>> application that supports calendar/contact etc information and point them at
>> the "full" format instead of the microformat, which requires consumer
>> applications to add more functionality.
>>
>> To me, that's just the state of things now. I have no technical reason to
>> not use them. I just think that if you just make the "full" format,
>> applications consuming this information are more likely to support/handle

--- i think that really needs to be updated. They are missing the
point of semantic mark-up over flat files completely. Firstly, flat
files are out-of-sight and therefore out-of-mind. The data drift is
much more likely than files (HTML) you stare at on a daily basis.

Their argument of the consumer application [needs] to add more
functionality is moot. I have my hCard, but then the link people click
to download the vCard just uses a webservice and returns the "full"
format anyway. The consumer application needed nothing more than
normal.

One thing that i always try to remember is that one-off quote from the
movie contact. They give Jodie Foster some pills so if she gets into
trouble she can poison herself. They give her the pills "Not for all
the reasons they can think of, but for all the reasons they can't"
That idea is really exemplified in semantic mark-up for individual
"full" formats. You COULD try to create 2334 different flat files on
your server and offer each one, but those are for everything you CAN
think of, semantic mark-up is great for all the formats you CAN´T
think of! Empower the consumers to re-use the data as they want to,
rather than how you tell them.

We should really try to update benefits in this way. Good spot on
stackoverflow.com can we change it somehow?

Thanks,
-brian

-- 
brian suda
http://suda.co.uk