[uf-discuss] [Zen of Microformats] Two Fundamental Principles of Information Design

[Scott Reynen]

On Mar 8, 2007, at 9:04 AM, Ara Pehlivanian wrote:

> Very clearly articulated. Kudos. I think that the only thing that
> might be missing there (and maybe I'm just stating the obvious) is the
> need to express which convention you're applying when using the class
> value "family-name", i.e. Microformats. That way there won't be any
> confusion in situations when for example, a product manufacturer
> releases a list of their products "by family" and marks up their
> content with the class "family-name", which isn't intended as a
> Microformat and could be confused by a consuming agent. Perhaps a
> namespace/schema is required to round off your example.
>
> What say you?

In the HTML examples, we're currently using (or recommending anyway)  
profile URIs for such disambiguation [1], as namespaces are  
"considered harmful" [2].  The XML examples may require namespaces,  
but that's generally outside the scope of microformats, which are  
written specifically for use in (X)HTML [3].  If you're interested in  
such disambiguation, I'd encourage you to get involved in the ongoing  
thread on the subject, unfortunately titled "Microformat tools  
bogosity test."

[1] http://microformats.org/wiki/profile-uris
[2] http://microformats.org/wiki/namespaces-considered-harmful
[3] http://microformats.org/about/

Peace,
Scott