[uf-new] hProduct progress -- category discussion

[Myers, Jay]

Hi Paul,

Catching up on my hProduct work here...

I wanted to address the topic of subcategories. I think that many
subcategory-specific values may be addressed in the p-v section of the
hProduct microformat. I agree that there are many universal product
attributes that can be addressed using the base hProduct spec, and it
would be worth it to continue foundational work.

Speaking of category, the current foundation hProduct brainstorm schema
doesn't include any mention of product category. I could envision adding
category and subcategory nodes (ala category "breadcrumbs") to help
identify product cats and subcats.

Thoughts?


Thanks,

Jay


Jay Myers
Lead Web Development Engineer
Online Solutions, BestBuy.com
jay.myers at bestbuy.com
(w) 612-291-4007
(twitter) @jaymyers

-----Original Message-----
From: microformats-new-bounces at microformats.org
[mailto:microformats-new-bounces at microformats.org] On Behalf Of Paul Lee
(???)
Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2008 12:20 AM
To: microformats-new at microformats.org
Subject: [uf-new] hProduct progress (reply)

Hi Jay,

Just had two points to chime in on:

1. Reading over the page, sounds still a bit early to call it hProduct.
=)

2. That said, I agree with you that there's a case for a separate
format.  The hListing proposal page makes it clear that it simply
wasn't designed to address retail products, for instance:

"We are focusing on providing "just enough" structure to enable
matching, not to consummate transactions. This is distinct from the
majority of formats described on the wiki under listing-examples,
which are specific enough to completely describe products for retail
sale according to the idiosyncratic semantics of particular merchants
and shopping engines. Instead of encoding retail-oriented fields such
as UPCs, SKUs, and manufacturer part numbers, this proposal
acknowledges that many listings are for "inventories of one" that may
not have such precise abstractions."

A product microformat could help fill the gap for information like
condition, brand, MPN, and unique product identifiers (UPC/EAN, ISBN).

3. Of course, that leads to the question: What about all the product
subcategories? My sense from reading archives is that that might be
part of the reason why discussion on product has died out - it's a
pretty behemoth task to design for tens of highly diverse categories,
with their own subcategories, many of which are still evolving.  I
think, however, there's a lot of value in focusing on the common
ground across all products, and the value that that can add in and of
itself, as well as as a foundation for future work on subcategories.

Paul
Google Product Search


[uf-new] hProduct progress

Jay Myers jmyers at visi.com
Wed Aug 6 14:59:06 PDT 2008

All,

There is work being done on new standards and reviving the
hProduct microformat. During the course of this effort,
people have pointed to hListing as a more viable, mature

format for displaying product data. We proponents of
hProduct feel that a separate hProduct uF would be more
granular, and provide more specifics around the products,
which often are more complex and have important attributes

that are outside of the scope of hListing and others.
Please see the updated brainstorming and draft proposal
wiki pages for more information on the updated schema.

Nonetheless, there are still correlations between hListing

and hProduct that can't be ignored. It has been suggested
that hProduct be used in conjuction with hListing to
enhance the semantics of that format, where hProduct would
live under .item. This I agree with, but I would still

propose it also be used separately.

I would appreciate any thoughts or ideas you might have
around the revival effort of hProduct.

Thanks,

Jay
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