[microformats-discuss] Microformats, REST, and XML

[Ryan King]

On Sep 19, 2005, at 4:47 PM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote:
> Hi Kevin,
>
> On Sep 19, 2005, at 4:37 PM, Kevin Marks wrote:
>
>> On Sep 19, 2005, at 12:26 PM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote:
>>
>> It's a nice idea, certainly. There is a dream of a word processor  
>> whose native format is XHTML+ CSS:
>>
>> http://weblog.delacour.net/archives/2004/07/ 
>> my_kingdom_for_a_web_editing_tool.php
>
> Anything come of that dream?  Doesn't sound like much has changed  
> in 12 months....
>
>>> What would this list recommend as the best practice (assuming  
>>> plist = XOXO for purpose of discussion)?
>>
>> One thing is that some properties and names you don't want exposed  
>> to your users; the multiple inheritance trick you can do with  
>> classnames that hCard etc exploit is not really possible with  
>> XOXO, but XOXO gives you a good generic mapping in the absence of  
>> a specialised microformat.
>
> Ah, I think I'm starting to get it.  It is similar to the Python  
> problem of 'When do you use a dictionary, and when do you create a  
> custom class'?   The answer usually comes down to, "When there's  
> specialized processing involved."

You can almost always still use a dictionary as your collection, and  
either wrap or extend that.

> In the microformats cases, is it a maxim that:
>
> everything should be XOXO, unless it is a specialized microformat
>
> ?

Hmm interesting assertion, several possible reformulations...

1. Collections should be xoxo.
2. Specialized collections should reuse xoxo.

and generalizing...
3. Everything should be semantic [x]html. When appropriate, use  
microformats.

;)

--
Ryan King
ryan at technorati.com