[uf-discuss] A couple of real-world usage problems

[Mike Rumble]

Hello,

I'm working on a redesign of a website for one of the UK's main package 
holiday operators, and having been following the Microformats scene for 
the past few months, I feel that this is going to be a perfect 
opportunity to fold in a few Microformats.

I'm learning about the Hows of Microformats and how to implement them 
from a code point of view, but am struggling slightly with some of the 
semantics behind when to use them, and would appreciate the input from 
others on the list with regards to a couple of points that have left me 
confused...

Take for example the cruise section of this holiday website I'm working 
on... a cruise comprises a departure date, an arrival date, a title, a 
location and a website giving for information about the cruise.

Using hCalendar I'd mark it up looking something like this :

<div class="vevent">
    <span class="uid">20070602-1 at url.com</span>
    <abbr class="dtstart" title="20070602">Sunday 2nd</abbr> to <abbr 
class="dtend" title="20070609">Sunday 9th June 2007</abbr>
    <span class="summary">Cruise Title</span>
    <span class="location">Cruise Location</span>
    <a class="url" href="http://www.url.com">Book now</a>
</div>

...so far so good.

The first issue I'm struggling with is when the information is presented 
in different places across the site. For example a search results page 
may present a scaled down version of the information above, looking 
something like this:

<div class="vevent">
    <span class="uid">20070602-1 at url.com</span>
    <abbr class="dtstart" title="20070602">Sunday 2nd</abbr> to <abbr 
class="dtend" title="20070609">Sunday 9th June 2007</abbr>
    <a class="summary" href="http://www.url.com">Cruise Title</a>
</div>

The link would point to the page with the full vEvent on it.

What I'm getting at is does the user-agent or search engine see these a 
two separate events? If not, is there value in using hCalendar in both 
places?

The second issue I'm struggling with relates to the itinerary of a 
cruise, because as well as having details such as departure and arrival 
dates and other meta data, a cruise also has an itinerary which includes 
various ports of call at various dates. These ports of call themselves 
can be considered as vEvents but they are also directly related to the 
cruise itinerary itself.

What I'm wondering is whether it is possible to represent the 
relationship between events like this, maybe by nesting one vEvent 
inside of another? Would this work, is it even allowed in the iCal spec?

This is not just about creating groups of events, but creating groups of 
events which are linked to another event (a parent, if you will), in my 
example above a port of call is an event, but it is also part of a 
larger event and cannot occur without the parent cruise event.

This could be applied to other things as well, take for example, a 
conference. The conference itself is an individual event, as are the 
sessions which take place during it and both could be represented using 
hCalendar. However the session events can not exist without the 
conference event, so if it is removed they to should be.

Sorry if this doesn't make a great deal of sense - I've just read it 
back to myself and I'm not even sure it makes sense to me, but I'm keen 
to learn more about using Microformats in real-world situations like 
these and would be grateful for any input that others here on the list 
may have.

Thanks a lot,
Mike.