[uf-new] note/notereference class-pattern microformat?

[Sebastian Heath]

Hi,

   I'm currently in the early stages of writing guidelines for a  
series of
digital publications, both books and articles. I would like to be as
"standard" as possible, so POSH should have a role going forward.  
Meaning
xhtml encoding, and I'd like to try to standardize my class names as  
much as
possible.

  Having chosen xhtml, I pretty quickly come up against the absence of a
comprehensive vocabulary - microformats or otherwise - for what I want  
to
do. I've seen http://microformats.org/wiki/book-brainstorming , which  
is a
start. But is it still active? If yes, I would like to see it  
generalized in
a "text class" microformat that could be applied to all longer forms of
text, regardless of whether they are books/articles/other and whether  
they
are intended for print or digital distribution.

  So perhaps the place to start is small: two classes for indicating the
relationship between notes and references to those notes in a text. I'm
purposefully punting on whether these notes are end/foot/sidenotes,  
because
that seems to be a runtime decision and/or personal preference. I want  
to
cover both.

  Brass tacks:

Pattern 1:
  <h1>Body Text</h1>
  <p>Some text. <a class="notereference" href="#note1">1</a>.</p>
<h1>Notes</h1>
  <p class="note" id="note1">Explanatory text.</p>

  The defined @class values are 'note' and 'notereference'. @href with
fragment identifier. 'class="note"' with @id.

Pattern 2:
  <p>Some text. <span class="note">Explanatory text.</span.</p>

Here only 'class="note"' is used. Presentation is a "runtime" decision  
via
css or other mechanism.

  I'm not interested in defining which elements are used. The html5  
aside
element, divs, spans, etc. That's up to the author. I'm really  
focussed on
the noteref and note relationship as indicated by classes and  
implemented
with @href and @id.

  I'm also not (yet) interested in the content of notes: the citation
microformat, frbr derived info, all can be contained in an element  
classed
as a 'note' if that's what you want to do.

  I've looked around and seen this very simple pattern implemented in  
many
places. I haven't seen it defined. If it is, I'd love to know that. If  
not,
is microformats a vehicle for doing so?

  Thank you,

  Sebastian.

  p.s. I hope I haven't started too far along in my thoughts to be  
useful.
I'm an RDFa and Digital Humanities geek who is dipping my toes into the
microformat community for the first time. Happy to be told where to  
start.

-------------
Sebastian Heath, Ph.D.
Clinical Assistant Professor,
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World,
New York University,
sh1933 at nyu.edu