[uf-discuss] Size considerations (or how to choose abbreviations)

[Christopher Rines]

In message <45373222.9010703 at charlesroper.co.uk> Charles Roper
<reachme at charlesroper.co.uk> in addition to other things said:
> Should "bin", var", "cult", etc., be written in full? (I think not, to 
> save bloating file sizes)

> These abbreviations are absolutely fine within the very narrow domain of 
> biological nomenclature and taxonomy, but expanded out into the wider 
> domain, then they become horribly generic and lose their meaning. Same 
> with using "sci".

In message <5j$UhbDvx8NFFwi7 at pigsonthewing.org.uk> Andy Mabbett
<andy at pigsonthewing.org.uk> in addition to other things said: 

> And yet we have "geo".

I think comparing geo and sci, etc. is not a great example as I think geo
can be thought of as a well known abbreviation.  

As with much other microformat work a well known standard or abbreviation
like vcard I think geo can is a (or close to) "standard" so it is a "safe"
abbreviation which I think is what we should be aiming for when creating an
abbreviation of any type.  I do realize GEO is being used by others such as
the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) but I THINK what I say holds as geo being
an implied abbreviation standard.

The point I am trying to make is abbreviations can be very dangerous and are
very easy to mis-interpret so I think we need to think long and hard before
choosing and implementing them.  I am not arguing against them in specific
cases but very well thought out cases.  

As microformats are human-readable first I think size is a secondary
consideration.  Are there any stats about how many sites are compression
enabled vs. not?

Thank You,

Christopher



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