parsing

This is a braindump, this page will need cleaning-up, take everything with a grain of salt at the moment.

For now, start with reading hcard-parsing as that has more detail and has been more throughly reviewed and implemented.

• I've documented my own thoughts on parsing which flesh out some of the ideas and go into more detail on algorithms and stuff. TobyInk 06:33, 21 Jul 2008 (PDT)

By Element

This is a matrix of element and type. This should be describe under what circumstances each value and where that value comes from. The list of elements has been taken from http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/index/elements.html with some HTML5 elements added, in particular those with special parsing needs.

See semantic html for a definitive list of elements.

data types

(this probably needs a better name) There are two types in microformats, protocol types and strings. Strings could be integers, such as ratings, strings, such as a note, or datetimes, such as dtstart. Protocol types are UIDs, URLs, email addresses, (sometimes Telephones and faxes)

If there is a comma list, then this is in order of availability. For instance, the ABBR element is @title,node-value. IF the @title is present then it is used, if not the stack is popped and node-value is looked at, if there is no node-value, then the value is NULL.

	protocol	string
A	@href,node-value	node-value
ABBR	@title,node-value	@title,node-value
ACRONYM	@title,node-value	@title,node-value
ADDRESS	node-value	node-value
APPLET	???	???(node-value)
AREA	@href,node-value	node-value
B	node-value	node-value
BASE (valid?)	@href
BASEFONT (valid?)
BDO (valid?)
BIG	node-value	node-value
BLOCKQUOTE	@cite?,node-value	node-value
BODY	node-value	node-value
BR (valid?)
BUTTON	@value?	@value?
CAPTION	node-value	node-value
CENTER	node-value	node-value
CITE	node-value	node-value
CODE	node-value	node-value
COL	node-value	node-value
COLGROUP	node-value	node-value
DATA	@value,node-value	@value,node-value
DD	node-value	node-value
DEL	@cite,node-value	node-value
DFN	node-value	node-value
DIR	node-value	node-value
DIV	node-value	node-value
DL	node-value	node-value
DT	node-value	node-value
EM	node-value	node-value
FIELDSET	node-value	node-value
FONT	node-value	node-value
FORM	@action?,node-value	node-value
FRAME	@src?,node-value	node-value
FRAMESET	node-value	node-value
H1	node-value	node-value
H2	node-value	node-value
H3	node-value	node-value
H4	node-value	node-value
H5	node-value	node-value
H6	node-value	node-value
HEAD (valid?)	node-value	node-value
HR (valid?)	node-value	node-value
HTML (valid?)	node-value	node-value
I	node-value	node-value
IFRAME	@src?	node-value
IMG	@src	@alt
INPUT	@value?	@value?
INS	@cite,node-value	node-value
ISINDEX (valid?)
KBD	node-value	node-value
LABEL	node-value	node-value
LEGEND	node-value	node-value
LI	node-value	node-value
LINK (valid?)
MAP	node-value	node-value
MENU (valid?)
META (valid?)
NOFRAMES	node-value	node-value
NOSCRIPT	node-value	node-value
OBJECT	@data,node-value	node-value
OL	node-value	node-value
OPTGROUP (valid?)	node-value	node-value
OPTION	node-value	node-value
P	node-value	node-value
PARAM (?)	node-value	node-value
PRE	node-value	node-value
Q	node-value	node-value
S	node-value	node-value
SAMP	node-value	node-value
SCRIPT	node-value	node-value
SELECT (valid?)	node-value	node-value
SMALL	node-value	node-value
SPAN	node-value	node-value
STRIKE	node-value	node-value
STRONG	node-value	node-value
STYLE (valid?)	node-value	node-value
SUB	node-value	node-value
SUP	node-value	node-value
TABLE(valid?)	node-value	node-value
TBODY	node-value	node-value
TD	node-value	node-value
TEXTAREA	node-value	node-value
TFOOT	node-value	node-value
TH	node-value	node-value
THEAD	node-value	node-value
TIME	@datetime,node-value	@datetime,node-value
TITLE	node-value	node-value
TR	node-value	node-value
TT	node-value	node-value
U	node-value	node-value
UL	node-value	node-value
VAR	node-value	node-value

New Elements

When a new semantic HTML element is introduced, follow these steps to update microformats to handle the new element.

1. add the element to SemanticHTML MediaWiki extension, which enables creating wiki live markup examples
2. update parsing rules accordingly (on parsing and hcard-parsing wiki pages)
3. create/iterate actual live markup examples on wiki with real world content examples
4. implement experimental new parsing support, test on wiki examples. optionally deploy for broader testing (e.g. dev.)
5. if results are as expected/predicted, create test case from example markup with results as expected. if not then re-assess how parsing should work and go to 2.
6. add parsing support to additional implementations
7. have individual implementations test/deploy broadly as they see fit

Links

• XML.com Parsing microformats
• Acid Test