<span class="gmail_quote"></span><span class="q">On 12/22/05, <b class="gmail_sendername">Ryan King</b> <<a href="mailto:ryan@technorati.com" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">ryan@technorati.com </a>> wrote:</span><div><span class="q"><span class="gmail_quote"></span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> First of all, see the discussion here: <a href="http://www.microformats.org/" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://www.microformats.org/</a><br>blog/2005/11/02/xfn-grandeur/</blockquote> </span><div><br>Apologies, I hadn't seen that; it looks like I'm a little late on this topic, so if I'm not contributing anything new feel free to shut me up. <br></div><span class="q"><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">> Identifying the target is a little more complicated.  Generally, we <br>> should check the linked page for an <address> element, and assume <br>> that linking to a page means relating to the author of that page.<br><br>I'm not sure what you mean by the last part above.</blockquote></span><div><br>Well, the microformats blog post talks about using URLs as a proxy for people.  If a page at a URL includes an <address> element, it seems safe to assume that the content of that <address> element would be a representation of the person that the URL is a proxy for. <br><br>Suppose <a href="http://source.website/blogroll.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://source.website/blogroll.html</a> includes an XFN link to <a href="http://target.website/" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"> http://target.website/</a>.  If <a href="http://source.website/blogroll.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"> http://source.website/blogroll.html</a> contains an <address> element, the content of that element would be the obvious representation of the person on the source side of the XFN relationship.  If <a href="http://target.website/" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"> http://target.website/</a> contains an <address> element, the content of that element would be the obvious representation of the person on the target side of the XFN relationship.  But... (see below)<br></div><span class="q"> <br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> > If that assumption is incorrect, the source could link directly to<br>> an hCard ( i.e. <a href="http://www.example.com/page.html#hCard" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://www.example.com/page.html#hCard </a>).  This<br>> requires the hCard to have an id, which makes things a bit <br>> trickier; what should the source do if the hCard does not have an<br>> id?  When publishing hCards, how do you know whether they'll need<br>> ids?  Is this situation within the 80%?<br><br>You can certainly use XFN links to link directly to people's hCards. </blockquote></span><div><br>Well, the tricky situation I was trying to describe is, what if the target is an hCard on a page not authored by the person in the hCard? Suppose <a href="http://target.website/" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"> http://target.website/ </a> is authored by Joe Schmoe, but <a href="http://target.website/#wife" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://target.website/#wife</a> is Jane Schmoe's hCard.  If someone links to <a href="http://target.website/#wife" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://target.website/#wife</a> with an XFN relationship, the general case says it's a link to Joe, even though the intention may be to link to Jane.  I don't know if this is a common practice, or a theoretical edge case, or something that is currently rare but could become common practice as hCard/XFN are more widely deployed (need to find the cowpaths).  This may be more of an issue for tools than for people authoring websites.  I don't consider myself experienced enough to make these decisions. <br></div><span class="q"><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">But, honestly, I think the two concerns: 1) annotating social <br>connections and 2) identifying people are separate concerns in terms <br>of formats/technology.<br><br>XFN and hCard do different things. Together they can be very useful,<br>but "identifying authors of pages" is a concern that stands on its<br>own, apart from XFN.</blockquote></span> <div> <br>Indeed, that's why I intended to present this as "best practices when using the formats," as opposed to "changes to the formats."  It's a combination of XFN, hCard, and identifying the person that a URL represents.  XFN links the URLs, hCards represent the people, I'm just trying to fill in the (perceived?) gap between the URLs and the hCards. <br></div><span class="q"><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">I don't know if it needs to be explained on <a href="http://gmpg.org" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"> gmpg.org </a>. Perhaps someone<br>could start a wikipage to document these best practices?</blockquote></span><div><br>Well, at the least <a href="http://gmpg.org" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"> gmpg.org</a> should probably link to the wiki page.  "XFN works best when used as explained on [this wiki page]."  How about the name "social-networking-practices" for the wiki page?  I can try to draft something up during the weekend. <br></div><span class="q"><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Just remember that just because two technologies get lumped together <br>in an application doesn't mean they should be conflated in their <br>specifications.</blockquote></span><div><br>Agreed.  I do not wish to change XFN or hCard.<br></div></div>