[uf-discuss] Should microformat features (like rel-tag) have explicit scope?

[Scott Reynen]

On Feb 7, 2007, at 10:30 PM, Derrick Lyndon Pallas wrote:

> Yes, there are other ways to solve the problem; in fact, I do solve  
> the problem in an unelegant way. My real issue now is (as laid out  
> above) the resistance to real discussion of the problem.

I think what you're seeing is that microformats value publishers  
above parsers.  Anything that makes publishing even marginally more  
difficult to make parsing easier is a non-starter.  As long as  
parsing is *possible* (and you seem to agree it is), that's good  
enough for microformats.  The theory is if we can make it absolutely  
as easy as possible for publishers, they'll flood the web with  
semantic content, and parsers will work through the difficulty to get  
that content.  And you'll find plenty of interest here in helping  
through the difficulty.  But not much in shifting any (not even a  
bit) of the difficulty onto publishers.  That's just fundamentally  
not how microformats are designed.

If you want a general means of consuming microformat content, just  
consume RDF.  GRDDL [1] converts specific microformats to RDF, so any  
RDF consumer is effectively a generic microformats consumer.  When  
new microformats are developed, they'll end up in RDF as soon as  
someone works out the GRDDL, and you won't need to update your RDF  
consumer at all.

[1] http://www.w3.org/2004/01/rdxh/spec

Peace,
Scott