[uf-discuss] CFP microformat?

[Angus McIntyre]

At 21:45 +0200 20.05.2006, Ryan King wrote:
>On May 20, 2006, at 9:13 PM, Tantek Çelik wrote:
>>  A good first step might be to see if you can get these conferences just
>>  using hCalendar to start with ...
>I want to reemphasize this....
>
>The use case you described sounds like a specialized case of "events + todos"
>which sounds like exactly hCalendar. If hCalendar isn't sufficient, the
>only way to know reliably is try it out first.

There can be calls for papers which don't have 
such an obviously 'eventy' nature, i.e. calls for 
journal articles. There's certainly a due date in 
almost all cases, but other attributes may be 
very specific to a CFP rather than an hCalendar 
item. Keywords - tags - is one obvious one, and 
paper length is another. I offer as an example 
the call for journal articles at:

     http://www.researchforsexwork.org/target/calls/r4sw09.html

whose editor has been complaining to me that her 
contributors are apparently incapable of reading 
the part that says "maximum number of words is 
..."

This example includes:

	- journal title ("Research for Sex Work")
	- journal instance title ("Sex Work and Money")
	- due date (15 Dec 2005)
	- paper length (1200 words)
	- acceptable languages for submissions (English, French, Chinese ...)
	- contact address (an obvious hCard candidate)
	- suggested topics (which are more than just tags)

Many CFPs will have multiple due dates - the due 
date for submission of an abstract, and the due 
date for submission of the final article. In some 
cases there may even be a due date for submission 
of the camera-ready copy of accepted articles.

hCFP starts to look like a candidate for a 
complex microformat that contains an hCard, plus 
hCalendar entries for due dates, plus perhaps a 
microformat representation of a conference, book 
or journal (which may have hCalendar and hCard 
entries themselves), plus some CFP-specific 
information like paper length and submission 
languages.

This might be in 20% territory, but in other ways 
it's quite a natural application of microformats 
and the payoff - automated identification of CFPs 
- is worthwhile.

Angus