[uf-new] ISBN, ISSN and the case for moving forward now

[Andy Mabbett]

In message
<21e770780703180640i1b09dab3ma6b4cf058ec38388 at mail.gmail.com>, Brian
Suda <brian.suda at gmail.com> writes

>microformats solve a GENERAL problem, not a specific one.

I see that others have already addressed this point. I wonder whether
ISBN and ISSN, between them, comprise more or less than 80% of the UIDs
published online.

>The Citation format has discussed how to handle ISBNs with the UID and TYPES
>http://microformats.org/wiki/citation-brainstorming#Outstanding_Issues
>
>The UID brainstroming page has suggestions to re-use the abbr-design pattern:
>http://microformats.org/wiki/uid-brainstorming#abbr_pattern

I thought one of the microformats "principles" was to make things easy
for publishers; and another to base uFs on existing practice;

How are:

        <div class="uid"><span class="type">ISBN</span>: <span
        class="value">123456</span></div>

or
        <abbr class="uid" title="urn:isbn:0950788120">
        0 9507881-2-0</abbr>

doing either of those things; and how are they better for publishers
than:

        <div class="isbn">ISBN 0-313-32847-1</div> ?

In the case of the former example, how sure are we that the string
"ISBN" is "always" published alongside ISBN numbers?

It's also somewhat alarming that ISBN was raised there in August 2005,
yet we still don't seem to be near to having a format which publishers
can use to resolve the problem in my original post in this thread.

-- 
Andy Mabbett
                 <http://www.pigsonthewing.org.uk/uFsig/>

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