[uf-discuss] Custom Fields Microformat?

[Manuel Simoni]

On 11/25/06, Aaron Gustafson <aaron at easy-designs.net> wrote:
> Manuel Simoni wrote:
> > the hcustomfield-* classes are minimally
> > invasive:
> >
> > <ul>
> >  <li class="hcustomfield">
> >   <span class="hcustomfield-name">Priority</span>:
> >   <span class="hcustomfield-value">low</span>
> >  </li>
> > </ul>
...
> This is very similar to the property-value pair/group concept[1] we have
> floated as part of hProduct.
>
> [1] http://microformats.org/wiki/hproduct-brainstorming#Extensibility

Cool, I think it's isomorphous... The "p-v" corresponds to
"hcustomfield", the "property" to "hcustomfield-name" and the "value"
to "hcustomfield-value".

> I don't know if you think what we've put together would be applicable (we
> were trying to keep it as simple as possible, hence the short names), but I
> agree this is something that would be really nice to have and should be an
> aspect of microformats, possibly existing as a microformat unto itself which
> can be combined with other ones when/where it makes sense to create
> subformats specific to a particular use (for instance, wine, televisions,
> cars, etc. all have custom fields in the product world, most of which are
> consistent within their category and could combine a property-value
> construct with a standard hProduct to make a nice subformat -- perhaps a
> better approach than the creation of niche microformats like hWine, though
> I'm open to argument in the other direction).

This sounds very interesting... of course, there's a danger here of
going meta, and never coming back :) However, like for custom fields
in weblogs and CMS, I can imagine that such a subformat could make use
of primitive values (strings at least) and links to other resources.

As an aside, I find this use of automatically inferring "property" and
"value" inside a <DL> [1] problematic, because it places a
non-necessary burden on parsers, while making the life of writers only
minimally easier.

[1] http://microformats.org/wiki/hproduct-brainstorming#List_property-value_association_.28groups.29

Let's keep the topic of a general name/value subformat on the table,
and see how it develops.

Cheers,
Manuel