[uf-discuss] Re: xfn and biographies

[Jim O'Donnell]

On 23 Jan 2008, at 20:44, Toby A Inkster wrote:

> Jim O'Donnell wrote:
>
>> Also, the rel attribute on links seems handy for expressing
>> relationships between letters and their authors, or letters and their
>> recipients, or even letters in a series of correspondence. Does  
>> anyone
>> know if there are any examples of this out there already?
>
> rel/rev="made" is in common usage. You could use rel="made" when  
> linking
> from author to letter, and rev="made" for the reverse relationship.
>
letter-to-author is the relationship I'm really interested in, in the  
sense of 'show me all letters by the same author' or 'show me all  
correspondence in this series'. Rev seems a bit of a dead-end, but I  
had thought of maybe using rel="author" on a link to the author. Or I  
could go for consistency with Dublin Core, since that's commonly used  
in archives, and use rel="creator".

Has anyone done any work on simple microformat class names based on  
the Dublin Core element set?

> To link letters in a series of correspondence there is of course
> rel="next" and rel="prev". Also rel="first" and rel="last" may  
> prove easy,
> and rel="contents" to get back to the full listing of letters.
>
Yeah, that's what I'd thought of doing but I hadn't considered the  
fact that each letter is several pages in itself. So there's next and  
prev in terms of navigating within a letter, and then next and prev  
in the context of moving between letters in a series.

I don't think there'll be one definitive table of contents. I'm not  
decided on this yet, but at the moment I envisage several methods of  
listing the contents - indexed by author, by time, by recipient or by  
places and vessels referenced within the text.

> Not sure about linking recipients to letters. You may need to  
> define your
> own rel/rev="recipient".


That would make sense. Looking at the texts, I've realised that the  
recipient is not always the person that the letter is addressed to.  
Eg. he addresses a letter to Rev. Tyler but it's intended for his  
wife. I think I may have to publish author and recipient alongside  
each letter, rather than marking them up directly in his text.

Cheers
Jim

Jim O'Donnell
jim at eatyourgreens.org.uk
http://eatyourgreens.org.uk
http://flickr.com/photos/eatyourgreens