process-faq
microformats process FAQ
This page is for documenting Q&A about the microformats process. If you have a new question to ask, please consider first asking your question on the microformats irc channel (preferably) or microformats-discuss mailing list. New questions and answers should be added to the end of the list. If you have a new question but not an answer, please add it to process-issues.
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Q&A
Why waste time wading through flakey HTML
Would it not be better for microformats to standardize markup based on the domain model than waste time wading through flakey html?
- The "gather real world examples" for analysis step of the process is specifically focusing on the data published, and not the markup patterns (or lack thereof). This is why the *-examples step says:
Every word in that sentence matters. implied schemas, that is, you have to look at the content of the examples and note what abstract notions/fields/properties that people are publishing. That's very deliberate in that it is much less important (if at all) what flakey html is being used."Document the schemas implied by the content examples."
Analysis of current publishing practices helps us prioritize what problems are worth solving (i.e. there is already demonstrated incentive for people to publish such information) as opposed to what problems are purely theoretical, or wishful thinking (e.g. if only everyone would publish metadata ABC then we could build applications XYZ). In fact, this is probably one of the most important parts of the process. Domain models that don't account for what is published on the real web tend to be less useful on the real web as has been demonstrated by the numerous a priori XML formats that have been proposed but never got any adoption. The XML formats that have gained adoption are those that modeled the data of existing content publishing behaviors (e.g. the Atom format).