Scott,
Thanks for your reply and pointing out some of the things
you did. I
don't want to start a debate, but just say that I've often
found it
necessary to consider hypothetical scenarios when doing just
about any
kind of programming. My small example wasn't either at all
implausible;
in fact, I'd easily believe that a lot of people are a
member of-- have
a role in-- more than one organization, especially should we
accept a
family as an organization. If we choose to ignore
plausible
hypothetical examples, then it's hard to see how the program
is going to
succeed over the long term without repeated modification,
without
perpetually languishing in alphaville. With a little
reasonable
forethought, we'll hopefully work through that.
Just a thought.
On 11/27/2007 09:37 AM Scott Reynen wrote:
> On Nov 26, 2007, at 3:57 PM, ken wrote:
>
>> The idea of a semantic web is absolutely cool and
I'm really looking
>> forward to the day when we have some standards
agreed upon and we can
>> all start implementing them.
>
> I think we're long past that day, not just with
microformats but also
> with RDF vocabularies and various other ad-hoc
standards. People have
> been implementing tools based on such standards for
years now.
>
>> At the same time, I want those standards
>> to represent enough forward thinking that we don't
end up
>> un-implementing them in favor of something else.
So...
>
> We generally try to avoid consideration of hypothetical
future scenarios
> here, as few of us can predict the future with much
accuracy.
>
>> Maybe I'm thinking too far outside the box, but it
looks like the
>> formats proposed thus far all assume that the
(html) content we'll be
>> "semanticizing" is going to written in
such a way as to accommodate the
>> format, that all the information going (ultimately)
into, say, the vCard
>> for one person will be presented discretely from
the vCard information
>> for another person.
>
> This is largely true; however, there has already been
some work on
> addressing this issue, both in specific formats, and
more generally:
>
> http://microformats.
org/wiki/mfo
>
>> For example, suppose we have the following text in
>> a (fictitious local sports) webpage:
>>
>> "Bobby and Billy are on the same football team
and on Sunday they're
>> playing against the Falcons, whose coach is Ron
Smith. Ron Smith is
>> Bobby and Billy's father. The brothers are also
the star quarterback
>> and star fullback at Pittsfield High."
>>
>> In short, in this paragraph the information on one
person is
>> interspersed with information about the others.
>
> As I suggested above, you're not likely to find much
interest here in
> hypothetical examples. Until we have more real-world
examples of this
> kind of interspersed content, it won't be seen as a
high-priority
> issue. If and when it becomes a high-priority issue,
we should be able
> to develop a solution without significantly changing
existing
> microformat semantics, so we don't have to worry about
changing
> everything later. If you have any real-world examples
of this problem,
> I'd encourage you to add them to the MFO page in the
wiki.
>
>> Moreover, though the
>> paragraph doesn't say explicitly, we know that the
brothers' last name
>> is Smith. In realworld texts, the information on
people is seldom
>> separated out in a way convenient for the sort of
formatting which has
>> been proposed
>
> Microformats aren't merely proposals. They're being
published widely
> and used effectively in many applications. One of the
ways in which
> this problem is already addressed is the include
pattern, which allows
> the inclusion of content outside the root container:
>
> http://m
icroformats.org/wiki/include-pattern
>
>> I would think, too, that a lot of the work
>> that will arise after semantic formatting is
implemented will be in
>> older, already published texts, stuff that can't be
rewritten with
>> semantic formatting in mind.
>
> Indeed, that's one of the key goals of microformats -
they don't require
> significant revision of existing HTML to use.
>
> Peace,
> Scott
>
> _______________________________________________
> microformats-discuss mailing list
> microformats-discuss microformats.org
> http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microforma
ts-discuss
--
Thou shalt not molest a stranger, nor afflict him: for
yourselves also were strangers in the land of Egypt.
--Exodus 22:21
_______________________________________________
microformats-discuss mailing list
microformats-discussmicroformats.org
http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microforma
ts-discuss
|
