Reuse

One of several microformats principles.

microformats reuse building blocks from widely adopted standards:

• semantic, meaningful (X)HTML, i.e. POSH. See SemanticXHTMLDesignPrinciples for more details.
• existing microformats
  • as a whole, e.g. use hCard for representing people
  • in part, reusing particular semantic class names, following microformats naming principles
• well established schemas from interoperable RFCs

In general "doing what already works" (i.e. re-use) is greatly valued over "changing everything and starting from scratch" (i.e. re-invention).

Thus the burden of proof is always on those who wish to change or modify what already "works" to a great extent today. One clear instance of this is microformats' re-use of existing implied schemas (based on research of real world examples) and looking at existing widely interoperable standards as a basis for vocabulary as noted above, rather than inventing new idealistic a priori schemas or inventing new terminology for concepts already named in existing formats.

see also

• principles
• process