[uf-rest] HTTP headers for Microformats

Tue Mar 21 13:25:21 PST 2006

The profile attribute is probably the least desirable yet still  
viable option -- *if* people use it. Is there any data / anecdotal  
evidence of how often it's used? Just browsing through the individual  
uF specs, it doesn't seem to be emphasised too much.

Much more preferable would be a HTTP header. As I said,  
intermediaries don't like to dive into the content -- they're  
handling thousands to tens of thousands of requests a second, and  
they don't want to touch anything beyond the headers if they can  
possibly help it.

I was thinking of something that duplicated the information in the  
body, much as the link tag does; e.g.,
   Link: <http://www.example.com/myProfile>; rel="xmdp-profile"
or maybe a new header (since the profile attribute isn't isomorphic  
with a link tag);
   HTML-Profile: "http://www.example.com"

That way, it wouldn't be required, but it would be at least possible  
to express this information in a more friendly way.

On 2006/03/21, at 1:16 PM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote:

> Isn't that what an XMDP profile in <head> is supposed to be for?   
> Or were you looking for something in the *HTTP* headers? Why?   
> After all, it is just supposed to be HTML, no?
>
> -- Ernie P.
> On Mar 21, 2006, at 1:07 PM, Mark Nottingham wrote:
>
>> Are there any conventions for indicating whether content has a  
>> microformat in it based upon HTTP headers? While the link tag can  
>> be re-serialised as the Link HTTP header, that doesn't cover all  
>> microformats.
>>
>> The use case is microformat sniffing/modification/dispatching/etc.  
>> by intermediaries; generally, they're really loathe to open up the  
>> body. A flag in the headers (media type? separate header? etc.)  
>> would get uF detection off of the critical path.
>>
>> Yes, this makes things significantly more difficult for authors  
>> (at least until we fix the tools!), but it would be very helpful  
>> to be able to do it.
>>
>> Otherwise, some best practice that made it possible to detect  
>> whether some content embedded a uF within the first n bytes (say,  
>> 50) would be very helpful.
>>
>> --
>> Mark Nottingham
>> mnot at yahoo-inc.com
>>
>>
>>
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>
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>

--
Mark Nottingham
mnot at yahoo-inc.com