[microformats-discuss] Human readable value

[Ryan King]

On Aug 8, 2005, at 1:31 AM, Jeff Lindsay wrote:

> As I understand it, the actual value for most of the elemental
> microformats is found in the href attribute  (assuming within an
> anchor tag, which seems to be implied for the microformats I'm talking
> about: xfn, votelink, the rels). I'm wondering where I should look for
> a single human readable value... the text content of the element, or
> if specified, the title attribute of the element.

That probably depends on the specific situation (ie, which  
microformat we're talking about).

> An example using xfn:
>
> <a href="http://an9.org" rel="met friend colleague"
> title="anarkystic">Andy Smith</a>

I would say that both the rel and the anchor text are human readable  
here.

> Well, to stray for a moment, one thing I'm not sure has been discussed
> being a machine usability question is how would you represent this as
> data? Would you consider this one piece of data being an9.org links to
> a "met, friend, colleague" or would you consider it three pieces of
> data: met = an9.org, friend = an9.org, colleague = an9.org?

I don't think it maters externally- it will mostly depend on how you  
want to use the data and in what type of format you're storing it.

> I
> understand this might not be important at the moment since it's very
> much a machine usability question, but maybe it's been discussed or
> thought on?
>
> Anyway, however you organize this as data, let's assume the url is the
> value. If I were to pick one other value to be the human readable
> value, am I better off using the title attribute value than the
> element's content?

In general, I'd pick the element's content, but YMMV.

-ryan