[uf-new] Re: hTurtle: A GRDDL-Compatible Microformat for Turtle-in-HTML

[Sean B. Palmer]

Scott Reynen <scott at makedatamakesense.com> wrote:

> This may seem pedantic, but given your interest in semantics,
> I'm sure you can appreciate our interest in keeping the term
> "microformat" meaningful, not just another buzz word.

It doesn't seem pedantic, and I do appreciate your interest. I also
don't believe that it's wrong to call hTurtle a microformat.

Ajax once meant Javascript + XMLHttpRequest but now it just means
Javascript done well. Google used to not be a verb, and the company
still think it isn't. A Hoover used to be only those devices made by
The Hoover Company, a former division of the Whirlpool Corporation
sold to Techtronic Industries.

When you publish an HTML document that doesn't have a DOCTYPE
declaration, or one which has one but is invalid, do you not call it
HTML?

These are examples of where semantic sloppiness isn't really
sloppiness at all. You're right, I am rather interested in semantics.
I'm rather interested in the philosophy of linguistics too, and things
like descriptivism and prototypicality and all that lark.

I do sympathise that you want to regulate the term "microformat" and
any word matching h[A-Z][a-z]+, and I think that The Process has some
excellent design points; design points which hTurtle utterly violates.
But that's not to say that it's not a microformat.

Consider. There are three ways that terms can get misused:

* Good misuse that gets heavily adopted until everybody forgets that
it's misuse and it becomes a standard (google as a verb and the other
examples I gave above).
* Bad misuse that gets heavily adopted until everybody wants to give
the business up and become a carpenter (Web 2.0, RSS N.N, etc.,
perhaps).
* Either quality of misuse that doesn't get heavily adopted and as a
consequence changes nothing.

Which of these categories does hTurtle come under?

Do edge cases disqualify themselves?

Words are radial categories; you don't own the term "microformat" in
some yer-in-or-yer-out formal system. And it doesn't matter that you
don't, because the whole process of grassroots standardisation, to use
one of irritating recent buzzwords, is emergent. hTurtle is part of
the deal now, but it's not a deal breaker.

Many thanks for your calm feedback, on what probably seemed like
somewhat of a troll from me; I didn't intend it that way! I just
picked the most appropriate looking microformats list at the last
moment because I thought you guys would like to know whatever you
thought about it...

Thanks again,

-- 
Sean B. Palmer, http://inamidst.com/sbp/