[uf-new] Is including profiles a must?

Tue Jun 26 09:30:23 PDT 2012

On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 8:51 PM, Ian Yang <ian.html at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> On the profile section ( http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard#Profile )
> of the hCard page, it says content that uses hCard should reference
> the profile by using:

Note the "should" in that text.

> <link rel="profile" href="http://microformats.org/profile/hcard">
> or
> This content uses <a rel="profile"
> href="http://microformats.org/profile/hcard">hCard</a>.
> or
> <head profile="http://microformats.org/profile/hcard">
>
> Could you please explain the reason that including profiles is a must
> for using micorformats? Thank you very much.

It's not a must, it's a should (as quoted), per RFC2119.

In practice, most uses of hCard omit a profile reference.

In the future we may figure out how to make microformats.org
vocabularies automatically referenceable rather than using explicit
profile references.

Thanks

Tantek