xfn and biographies

Hello,

At work, I'm kicking around microformats as a method for
adding  
additional semantic information to archives - letters, diary
entries,  
log books and so on. I blogged a little about this already -
using  
rel-tag to tie together related materials:
http://eatyourgreens.org.uk/archives/2008/01/
microformats_an_1.html

Does anyone have any thoughts on using xfn (or some variant
thereof)  
to add machine-readable relationships to published
biographies? Or in  
general, to express the relationships that exist within the
network  
of people associated with an archive of published writing? A
specific  
example is the link from
ht
tp://www.nmm.ac.uk/flinders/ListPeople.cfm?ID=41
to ht
tp://www.nmm.ac.uk/flinders/ListPeople.cfm?ID=96 (near
the end  
of the biography) where I could potentially mark that Ann is
the  
daughter of Matthew. If xfn is embedded inside a hcard, does
it refer  
to the person referenced by the hcard as the source of the 

relationship? Would I also need to somehow markup
"Flinders, Matthew"  
with a URL so it's explicit, to a parser, which Matthew
Flinders  
we're talking about?

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?

I'll try to mock up some prototype pages next month, but
thought I'd  
get comments from people with practical experience of using 

microformats before I start.

Thanks
Jim

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



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In message <DDBEAB3D-2322-457F-8473-31D313D07C75eatyourgreens.org.uk>,
Jim O'Donnell <jimeatyourgreens.org.uk> writes

>Does anyone have any thoughts on using xfn (or some
variant thereof)
>to add machine-readable relationships to published
biographies? Or in
>general, to express the relationships that exist within
the network  of
>people associated with an archive of published writing?

Yes; this has been discussed in relation to genealogy on
wiki:

        <http://mic
roformats.org/wiki/genealogy>

and mailing list.

> A specific  example is the link from
>ht
tp://www.nmm.ac.uk/flinders/ListPeople.cfm?ID=41
>to ht
tp://www.nmm.ac.uk/flinders/ListPeople.cfm?ID=96 (near
the end  of
>the biography) where I could potentially mark that Ann
is the  daughter
>of Matthew.

Presently; you can't. You can only express that she is his
child,
because XFN (like hCard, which you might also use to convey
data about
Ann and Matthew) has no expressions of gender.

See also:

        <http://microf
ormats.org/wiki/gender>

-- 
Andy Mabbett
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