[uf-discuss] hCard: url and tel

[Katrina]

Tantek Çelik wrote:
> On 1/7/08 2:42 PM, "Andy Mabbett" <andy at pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:
> 
>> In message <C3A7E2D2.9A3C3%tantek at cs.stanford.edu>, Tantek Çelik
>> <tantek at cs.stanford.edu> writes
>>
>>>> In any case, how is that different from:
>>>>
>>>>       <abbr class="dtstart" title="2008-01-07">7 Jan</abbr>
>>>>
>>>> where "2008" is "hidden"?
>>> title attribute is displayed in tool-tips
>> in some, but far from all, browsers.
>>
>>       <http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/global.html#h-7.4.3>
>>
>>       Values of the title attribute may be rendered by user agents in
>>       a variety of ways.
>>
>>
> 
> Data in the class attribute is a known anti-pattern.  Not a new issue.
> 

I admit I am new to microformats, however, I have always understood 
class attributes to hold a type of data: meta-data. They describe what 
sort of data that particular element holds. So if you have a list of 
books, instead of giving it a class attribute of red or blue, it should 
be labeled "books".

Or more pertinent to the microformats, class="vcard". vcard is meta-data 
saying that this particular element holds a vcard.


Reading this: 
http://microformats.org/wiki/anti-patterns#data_in_class_attributes

I just don't seem to understand how the Microformats community decides 
what sort of meta-data is acceptable and what others aren't?


I also thought that Microformats were to take human data and translate 
that into machine-readable. In order to do so, context needs to be 
translated to make it machine readable.

If you come across a business selling something, as a human, you can 
determine that it is work related, and it doesn't need to be labeled 
'work'. However, a machine cannot make that distinction and needs to be 
explicitly told. How does the Microformats community then allow people 
normal contextual communication but also specifies the contextual data 
for machines?

Surely the way to do that is through meta-data?

Kat