<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV>[sorry - got stuck in my outbox]</DIV><BR><DIV><DIV>On 2006/04/09, at 1:44 PM, Ryan King wrote:</DIV><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></FONT></DIV><DIV>No, its not emphasized, for several reasons:</DIV><DIV><BR></DIV><DIV>1. We don't have profile URIs for most microformats yet. This is mainly because profile URIs have been a low priority thing, since microformats pretty much work without them.</DIV> </BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR></DIV><DIV>Were there others?</DIV> </BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR></DIV><DIV>Are you asking "are there any microformats with profiles?"? If that's the question, then then, yes, xmdp and xfn have profiles, as does hCard (DanC's published a w3.org profile, which we're going to use for now).</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>No, I was asking if there were other reasons (you only listed one ;)</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV>This is a shame; the effort to come up and promote them is very low. The benefits -- being able to tell whether a document has an embedded microformat without deep parsing -- seem clear.</DIV> </BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR></DIV><DIV>The thing with profile uri's is that they can't be treated as reliable. The lack of a profile URI does not guarantee that there is no microformatted data in the document.</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Of course; it's always an open world. When it *is* there, though, it can significantly help some use cases. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV>I'm not sure how useful an HTTP-based method would be. Invariably, many would not implement it (many don't have that freedom in their existing tools), so any consumer wishing to consume microformats would be unable to reliably depend on the absence of such a header to mean that no microformats are involved.</DIV> </BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR></DIV><DIV>I wouldn't expect many to use it; just having a well-defined option will help my use cases. Inferring absence of a microformat from the absence of a header would be bad, and should be discouraged (as with many other types of metadata, e.g., Link headers).</DIV> </BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR></DIV><DIV>You're right here. Is there any prior art of html profile URIs in HTTP headers? That would seem to be the place to start.</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV></DIV><DIV><DIV>Funny you should mention that ;)<BR></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I've been toying with the idea of more formally specifying the link HTTP header;</DIV><DIV> <A href="http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP/Object_Headers.html#link">http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP/Object_Headers.html#link</A></DIV><DIV>and adding the ability to declare the profile in HTTP headers. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Cheers,</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV> <DIV>--</DIV> <DIV>Mark Nottingham <A href="http://www.mnot.net">http://www.mnot.net</A>/</DIV> </DIV><BR></BODY></HTML>