[uf-new] collection-design-pattern proposal

[Manu Sporny]

Brian Suda wrote:
> On 4/23/07, Manu Sporny <msporny at digitalbazaar.com> wrote:
>> Any objections to writing this up as a design pattern?
> 
> the downsides that instantly come to mind are:
> 1) you are using hidden meta data. Microformats do as much to keep
> things in the human-readable realm. Granted this is not data that is
> being used for human consuption, but anything that is "out of site, is
> out of mind" and the data with quickly drift.

I can see your point, but how is this any different from rel-directory,
rel-enclosure, and rel-home? What about the abbr-design-pattern and the
include-pattern? These are all examples of accepted "out of sight, out
of mind" Microformat design patterns (or was the 'site' misspelling on
purpose?) Am I missing your point?

> 2) if you 'reblog' data, things get republished out of context.

Could you please clarify? I think I know where you're going, but I don't
want to assume anything.

> 3) HTML is a tree structure so there already is a defined 'container'
> by virtue that it is a child node of the parent already. when an hCard
> is a child of a hcalendar's location there is different semantics.
> Just as when a rel-license is a child of an hReview. These additional
> semantics can be built in as you develop the formats, not at the
> general collection level.

What happens when you accidentally specify a parent-child relationship
without implying meaning? For example, what happens when you want to
talk about one movie in another movie's description? Or talk about a
song while talking about a movie? Or refer to a song while talking about
another song. For example:

"Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" was originally done by Cher, but then
remade in 1966 by Nancy Sinatra who is best known for her song "These
Boots Are Made for Walkin'". The original Bang Bang was released in 1966
by Imperial Records, Cher's label at the time.

haudio
   haudio.work-title = Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)
   haudio.collaborator = Cher
   haudio
      haudio.collaborator = Nancy Sinatra
      haudio.release-date = October 12th, 1966
      haudio.work-title = These Boots Are Made for Walkin'
   haudio.release-date = April 15th, 1966
   haudio.collaborator = Imperial Records (publisher)

If we were to use the argument that HTML already defines a 'container',
then the above example would imply that These Boots Are Made for Walkin'
was a track on Cher's album titled "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)".
An assumption that you can clearly see that we cannot make.

I don't think rel-license in hReview and hCard in hCalendar are good
examples because they are not collections.

Nothing is implied with the collection-design-pattern, it is still up to
the format to state what the semantics are for the pattern.

-- manu