<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">Bob & Jake,<DIV><BR><DIV><DIV>On Sep 16, 2005, at 1:29 PM, DuCharme, Bob (LNG-CHO) wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"> <DIV dir="ltr" align="left"><SPAN class="503402520-16092005"><FONT face="Arial" color="#000080" size="2">Jake Ham wrote:</FONT></SPAN></DIV><DIV><FONT face="Arial"><FONT size="2"><FONT color="#000080"><SPAN class="503402520-16092005"> > </SPAN>I still feel that there is a better way to describe them than an "ecosystem".<SPAN class="503402520-16092005"> </SPAN></FONT></FONT></FONT></DIV> <DIV><SPAN class="503402520-16092005"><FONT face="Arial" color="#000080" size="2">I strongly agree,</FONT></SPAN></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><BR></DIV><DIV>Okay, since this seems to have struck a chord, I've pasted my definition into the wiki (without 'ecosystem' :-), so others can refine it:</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><A href="http://microformats.org/wiki/Main_Page#Introduction">http://microformats.org/wiki/Main_Page#Introduction</A></DIV><DIV>-----</DIV><P style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.7px;">One popular definition from our mailing list is "simple conventions for embedding semantics in HTML to enable decentralized development." More precisely, microformats can be defined as:</SPAN></FONT></P><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.7px;">:simple conventions</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.7px;">:for embedding semantic markup</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.7px;">::for a specific problem domain</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.7px;">:</SPAN></FONT><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.7px;">in human-readable (X)HTML documents</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.7px;">::</SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.7px;">that normalize existing tag usage patterns</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.7px;">::</SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.7px;">using brief, descriptive class names</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.7px;"></SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.7px;">:to enable decentralized development</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.7px;">::</SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.7px;">of resources, tools, and services</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV>-----</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Have at it!</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>-- Ernie P.</DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>