[uf-discuss] Microformat h-names contradict the process documentation

[Martin McEvoy]

Hello Andriy

Welcome ....

On 22/03/2010 20:38, Andriy Drozdyuk wrote:
> I see the microformats in the upcoming drafts section all named:
> hAtom, hAudio, hListing, hMedia, hNews, hProduct, hRecipe, hResume, hReview
>
> While in the actual documentation:
> http://microformats.org/wiki/process
>
> one can find this philosophy:
> "DO NOT start with even labeling your effort "hXYZ". This is a very
> common mistake."
>    

Most of the drafts you mention above did not *start* out being named 
hAtom, hAudio .. etc. hAtom was simply about a blog posts format, hAudio 
was audio info and hMedia was media info... what I am trying to say is 
that it was only in the final stages of the process they were given 
their "h" prefix names, they didn't start out that way.

> What is the purpose of naming things with "h" prefixes and using all
> kinds of abbreviations? (e.g. "adr" instead of "address").
>    

For most new microformats, those that were created using "the process", 
get their naming conventions from hCard and hCalendar the "h" bit has 
just been re-used from them.
Personally in the case of hAudio and hMedia I wouldn't mind if they lost 
their h-bit at the beginning I believe the would be more modular and 
easier to mix with other microformats... but that's just me ;)

The adr property comes from hCard which gets its naming conventions from 
the vCard rfc http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2426.txt,  but as a rule its 
not really common to abbreviate or shorten words you will find that 
microformats use short "meaningful" class names mostly.

> It's already on the web (hence html) - shouldn't it be clear that it's (h)tml?
>    

The "h" bit of microformat class names in *most* cases is short for 
"HTML version of",
http://microformats.org/wiki/faq#Q._What_is_the_.27h.27_for.2C_in_front_of_Calendar_and_Card.3F

"Think this is this thing, represented in html" -- Frances Berriman
http://www.mail-archive.com/microformats-discuss@microformats.org/msg11051.html

but there are some variations of its meaning, the best interpretation I 
have seen is ...

"hAtom, hCard, hCalendar, hReview etc are all named after the character 
Horatio "H" Caine from the popular police procedural television series
"CSI: Miami"." -- Toby Inkster
http://www.mail-archive.com/microformats-discuss@microformats.org/msg11054.html


Best wishes.

-- 
Martin McEvoy