[microformats-discuss] Blog post format thoughts on xentry: entrylink, id, updated

[Geoffrey Glass]

I am updating my annotation code using the class names proposed by David 
Janes.  I want to see a standard more than particular class names.  The 
fierce debate about even the need for a blog microformat suggests that 
following Atom's lead is the quickest route to some kind of agreement.

I'll repeat David's six class name suggestions:

  xentry
    entrylink
    author
    published
    title
    content

The only name that causes my trouble is "entrylink", as all the others 
match Atom element names.  The obvious alternative is "link", which does 
match the Atom element name but may be more likely to conflict with 
existing classes.

Before I continue, I don't think that difficulty agreeing on additional 
fields should prevent or delay agreement on these core six.  Even if we 
use Atom as a precedent, we should not commit to defining microformat 
versions of all aspects of that format.

That said, there are two other required elements in Atom entries:  id 
and updated [1].  Updated should perhaps match current talk about a 
last-updated microformat.  Id is more difficult:  it is an IRI and may 
not be dereferenceable.  The spec describes it as "a permanent, 
universally unique identifier for an entry or feed" [2].  If the URL of 
a post changes, the ID will not.  My suspicion is that the majority of 
Atom feeds simply use the URL, but I could be mistaken (TextPattern's 
default installation uses a hash code).

The problem is that an href element is not appropriate for something 
that can't be dereferenced.  A title would show gobbledygook to the 
user, and text would need to be hidden with CSS.  It also goes against 
Tantek's principle that metadata should be visible.  In cases where the 
id is the URL, there's no problem:

<a class="entrylink id" 
href="http://www.geof.net/blog/2005/08/15/slug>Slug!</a>

For those with other forms of id, this is the least bad option I can 
think of:

<code class="id">tag:geof.net,2005-08-15:blog/slug</code>

The "summary" element might also be useful, but I wouldn't consider it a 
necessity.

[1] 
http://atompub.org/2005/07/11/draft-ietf-atompub-format-10.html#rfc.section.4.1.2
[2] 
http://atompub.org/2005/07/11/draft-ietf-atompub-format-10.html#rfc.section.4.2.6

Geof