[uf-new] Comments proposals

[Sarven Capadisli]

Okay, so, here is my brain dump:

David makes a valid point; we should put more focus back on the
existing examples in the wild.

I would like to get more insight from you (community) on why grabbing
the URI out of rel="in-reply-to" is semantically incorrect as David
mentioned [1]. Isn't this the case for all @rel values?

Martin brought up a while back whether if anyElement in atom:content
includes atom:feed. I couldn't get to the bottom of this either so
I've tested this [2] and it does seem to be valid according to the
Atom validator (if I didn't make a mistake) [3] and if the validator
is accurate. However, the nested feed (type=application/atom+xml)
appears to be lost when I gave it a go in Firefox, Opera, IE7, and
Google Reader. If anyone could elaborate on their findings or
interpretations, that would be great. Toby did mention that it is not
allowed (even though possible to parse but doesn't hang on to the
nested relationship currently) [4] and multiple hfeeds is a no go as
far as the current definition goes in the Wiki [5] Doesn't this mean
that we can't nest an hentry inside of another hentry? If we go this
route we may need to change the hfeed property slightly. Am I missing
something here? Where do we stand on this?

Perhaps this is something we can look further into but a rel="replies"
which point to the comments container may be useful (which then points
to separate hentrys).

<div id="article" class="hentry">
<a rel="replies" href="#comments">
<div id="comments">
	<div class="hentry">

Although it works well for chronological comments, doesn't work too
well for threaded comments.

On a similar note, doing "hentry comment" together [6] works fine for
chronological comments but not threaded. It was this case that led me
into investigating Atom's in-reply-to. But now I understand and agree
that it reflects a minor representation of comments out there as far
as having an anchor with rel="in-reply-to".

Clearly, our main problem is threaded comments. We are on the same
page here right?

As far as marking up the Blogpost #1 [7] example David mentioned with
hAtom, I'm not sure where to begin or if it is even possible (i.e.,
without altering the structure).

I do feel a bit uneasy about using rel="in-reply-to" after David's
comments, however, how do we go at threaded comments without a)
breaking the (h)Atom model (as long as we are clear on this and can
nest entries, I'm fine) and b) using a URI to point back to the parent
?

So, where the heck are we? One solution may be that we drop hentry in
comments and if class="comment" is found, interpret it like a regular
hentry. This would mean that class="comment" is like class="hentry"
and used only in context of comments. A little confusion: would it
still mean that we can't nest comments if we follow the hAtom format?
Any way, an example:

<id="article" class="hentry">
<a rel="replies" href="#comments"> (optional)
<id "comments">
	<id="comment-1" class="comment">
		<class="entry-title">
	
	<id="comment-2" class="comment">
		<class="entry-title">
	
		<id="comment-2-1" class="comment">
			<class="entry-title">
			<a rel="in-reply-to" href="#comment-2"> (optional)

	<id="comment-3" class="comment">
		<class="entry-title">


With this approach, we probably don't need rel="in-reply-to", but, it
can be a useful extension.

Of course, we can totally avoid using hentry and come up with
something else but I don't feel that is the right approach here as
this was already investigated [8]. However, I do think we need
different perspectives at this point from the rest of the community to
shed some light into the situation and so we can borrow some ideas or
come up with new ones.

[1] http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-new/2008-November/001942.html
(Second point)
[2] http://www.csarven.ca/labs/atom/test.atom
[3] http://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.csarven.ca%2Flabs%2Fatom%2Ftest.atom
[4] http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-new/2008-November/001917.html
[5] http://microformats.org/wiki/hatom-cheatsheet
[6] http://microformats.org/wiki/comment-brainstorming#Feedback
[7] http://microformats.org/wiki/comment-examples#Blogspot_.231
[8] http://intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/CommentsAreEntries

-Sarven