[uf-new] Suggestion for collections (audio, video, images)

Manu Sporny msporny at digitalbazaar.com
Thu Apr 12 19:15:32 PDT 2007


Has the concept of implicit collections and uF inheritance come up on
this discussion list yet? Here is the problem that we will be grappling
with in the next week or two:

Grouping collections of audio together is a common practice. The most
prominent examples are: music podcasts and audio albums. Each has a
higher-level container (the podcast or album) and an atomic piece (audio
sections or songs).

There are two potential solutions that we can see:

1. Create a collection micro-format (yamf - yet another microformat).
2. Allow nesting of the micro-format (preferred?).

Here is an example of how embedding the audio-info microformat could work:

Album example:

<div class="haudio">
 <span class="title">Audio Album Name</span> by
 <span class="collaborator fn">Artist Name</span>
 <div class="haudio">
  <span class="title">Track 1</span>
 </div>
 <div class="haudio">
  <span class="title">Track 2</span>
 </div>
 <div class="haudio">
  <span class="title">Track 3</span>
 </div>
</div>

Podcast example:

<div class="haudio">
 <span class="title">January 2007 Podcast</span> by
 <span class="collaborator fn">Podcaster Name</span>
 <div class="haudio">
  <span class="collaborator fn">Artist Name 1</span>
  <span class="title">Track 1</span>
 </div>
 <div class="haudio">
  <span class="collaborator fn">Artist Name 2</span>
  <span class="title">Track 2</span>
 </div>
</div>

Do these two examples seem like a rational way to move forward with
collections of media (note, we will probably use the same design pattern
for video and images as well). More specifically:

1. Is embedding of Microformats within Microformats to create implicit
   collections allowed?
2. Can the sub-trees inherit their parent's data values? If an artist
   name is specified in a parent hAudio uF, can the child hAudio uF
   assume that the same artist name applies to it?

-- manu



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