[uf-new] Grabb.it support for hAudio

[Gregory Borenstein]

Thanks, Manu!

The summary of my main suggestions gleaned from implementing hAudio  
goes like this: (1) the item option may be unnecessary, (2) it would  
be great to formalize htrack compatibility as a minimal, hand-codeable  
option.

Here are the details:

(1) The playlisting case for which the hAudio/item option in the spec  
was designed wasn't flexible enough to handle my situation, i.e. I  
needed to put other data inside each blog item that doesn't adhere to  
the spec (for example, the actual blog posts themselves and some  
embedded player stuff). That's why I ended up marking up each post as  
an independent hAudio despite the fact that they are very clearly an  
ordered playlist. From a parser point-of-view, though, the order is  
still retained by position on page so I'm not even sure where the item  
option would be useful outside of the rare case where you've got  
multiple _separate_ playlists on a single page.

(2) It would be great if there was a super simple minimal version of  
the spec that people could actually write up by hand. While it was a  
breeze to write code to programmatically markup a bunch tracks in  
hAudio, I can't imagine ever actually writing any hAudio by hand, i.e.  
if I was a regular blogger hand-writing links. For my part, I'd love  
to see the hAudio-hTrack compatibility I accidentally stumbled across  
in this process encouraged by basing a minimal version of the spec on  
the work the Yahoo guys have already done. If you guys could figure  
out a way to get the contributor name into that simple anchor markup  
semantically and the YMP adopted it (and maybe the del.icio.us  
playtagger as well), that would push a lot of adoption by the bloggers  
who need the utility of actual playing tools as a motivator.

For reference, here's the relevant part of Grabb.it's track markup:

<a type="audio/mpeg" title="Heretics" href="http://grabb.it/tracks/013df2baebf6.mp3 
" class="htrack download" rel="enclosure">Download MP3: Heretics -  
Andrew Bird</a>

The rel="enclosure" bit is solely there for hAudio compatibility. the  
"download" class is Grabb.it legacy that we'll eventually pull out now  
that we can depend on "htrack" being on there. YMP uses the title  
attribute in their player display, which makes me very tempted to put  
the artist in there too like title="Heretics - Andrew Bird", but that  
reduces the semantic coherence. If there was some other really easy  
place to put the artist that YMP would pick up, I'd definitely do it.  
And I'm pretty sure you'll never see an mp3 blogger using type="audio/ 
mpeg" which I technically don't need here since my mp3 urls always end  
in .mp3, but doesn't hurt.

Finally, a minor note on a discussion you've been having:

-I definitely prefer 'title' to 'fn'. It's much more semantic and  
perfectly easy to parse (from my point of view working on Mofo). ('fn'  
strikes me as an example of how being a programmer can make us inured  
to things having names which are arbitrary relative to the context  
we're using them in, which is definitely not a common skill for  
'normals').

Anyway, I hope that's helpful for you guys.

Thanks for you work on this format and thanks again to Martin for  
helping me implement it!

yours,

Greg
---
http://grabb.it/users/greg
http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens
http://atduskmusic.com

On Feb 19, 2008, at 4:25 PM, Manu Sporny wrote:

> Gregory Borenstein wrote:
>> I'm one of the founders of Grabb.it, an online music player and  
>> search
>> engine. With Martin's help, Grabb.it recently switched all of our  
>> user
>> pages to use hAudio markup. These pages aggregate each user's  
>> comments
>> and favorite songs. For example, here's mine:
>>
>> http://grabb.it/users/greg
>
> Fantastic work Greg - and Martin for doing the advocacy. Looked  
> through
> the site - really cool idea and exactly the type of use case we were
> thinking of when putting hAudio together.
>
> Greg, if you have any constructive criticism on the hAudio format,  
> we'd
> love to hear it. :)
>
> -- manu
>
> -- 
> Manu Sporny
> President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> blog: RDFa Basics (video)
> http://blog.digitalbazaar.com/2008/01/07/rdfa-basics
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