[uf-discuss] hCite "problem" statement/purpose of hCite?

[Jeremy Boggs]

This question stems from reading the "hCite progress" thread[1]: In  
reading the available citation pages on the wiki[2], the problems  
that hCitation tries to solve aren't stated anywhere clearly on the  
wiki, per the process.[3] (If I've missed it by mistake, I  
apologize.) Is there a page that has hCite's problem statement? I  
understand from a previous thread[4] that Tim White raised this  
question in January, 2006, but I'm not clear from the thread if his  
question was really answered. I'm not concerned so much whether the  
process was followed, but I'm still wondering, at this point, if we  
have or are in the process of creating a problem statement for  
hCitation. Problem statements seem pretty handy, especially for folks  
who don't understand the scope or purpose of a specific microformat.

I only ask because I'm confused about the specific purposes of  
hCitation, and the problems it tries to solve. Does it involve only  
instances in which one is citing a work as an "authority," or  
acknowledge the source for a quote or idea? Or is it for marking up  
general bibliographic information? Or both, and other contexts?

There are significant semantic differences between a "citation" and a  
simple bibliographic listing. In other words, its one thing for me to  
quote and cite a passage from Jeremy Keith's _DOM Scripting_, but a  
different thing to simply list Keith's book in a bibliography along  
with other books on JavaScript. There are also differences in listing  
one's own work in a CV, and printing bibliographic information in a  
review. A few others have already pointed these differences out in  
past discussions.[5]

I'm just wondering that, if the number of pages in a book is out of  
the scope of hCite, why is it out of the scope, what else is out of  
the scope, and what would be in the scope?

Thanks,
Jeremy

[1] http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2006- 
November/thread.html#7102

[2] http://microformats.org/wiki/citation-faq
      http://microformats.org/wiki/citation-examples
      http://microformats.org/wiki/citation-examples-markup
      http://microformats.org/wiki/citation-brainstorming
      http://microformats.org/wiki/citation-formats
      http://microformats.org/wiki/citation

[3] http://microformats.org/wiki/process

[4] http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2006- 
January/thread.html#2837

[5] http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2005- 
August/000646.html