[uf-new] Reusing classes names in multiple formats

[Ryan King]

On Jun 8, 2007, at 11:35 AM, Manu Sporny wrote:
> Brian Suda wrote:
>> On 6/8/07, Scott Reynen <scott at makedatamakesense.com> wrote:
>>> This is the same problem with re-using any class name in multiple
>>> microformats.  As mentioned earlier, if we re-use "summary" in  
>>> haudio
>>> (which I'm not arguing for nor against here), what if we want to
>>> embed haudio inside hreview?
>>
>> SUMMARY is defined as:
>> A short summary or subject for the object.
>
> I think Scott's point is that we have the same problem using  
> 'summary',
> as we do with using 'title', as we do with using 'fn'.
>
>> if you have
>> media
>>   hcard
>>    title#1
>>   title#2
>>
>> then title#1 will be used for the media, NOT title#2
>
> Egad! I had no idea that is what the community meant by "no
> namespace"... to programmers what you have described is a scope-less,
> procedural language. Am I misunderstanding you? Do Microformats use a
> scope-less design paradigm? Am I waaaaaay off here (I hope I am):

Yes. No name scoping. Only context scoping. And contexts can overlap.

> Variable Scoping
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_scoping
>
> Therefore, the example you give above would boil down to these
> assignment statements in a finite state machine (ie: the parser):
>
> media.title = title#1
> media.hcard.title = title#1

This isn't a useful analogy. Microformats are not a programming  
language anymore than HTML is a programming language (though some may  
think it is) [1]. HTML is a document language and, in some ways a  
data source for applications (web applications, if you will).

One of the things that works well in microformats and related  
technologies is that the vocabularies are collapsed into a flat list.  
This means that when you see a term you can know what it means,  
without knowing much more about the context in which is appears.

-ryan


1. http://webdesign.about.com/b/a/255718.htm