[microformats-discuss] additional machine info in XMDP

Wed Jul 13 04:36:23 PDT 2005

On Jul 13, 2005, at 7:10, Tantek Çelik wrote:
> Let's focus our time and efforts on microformats on practical uses 
> that
> exist today as much as possible. If you really want, perhaps keep 
> track of
> extra ideas like that in some side notes, perhaps a brainstorming 
> page.

Tantek et al.,
I'd like to bring the discussion back to its original start which was 
discovery of microformats and the importance of the XMDP. The simple 
practical concern is to know that microformats are being used, which 
ones, and what they cover. Here's what I think I learned in that 
regard:
1. The XMDP provides a great summary of the format that can be read 
by people as well as machines.
2. Pointing at the XMDP currently is the best hint that the page 
contains microformatted content because it is explicit.
3. A problem with using XMDPs is that the standard only allows for 
them to be linked from the profile attribute in the head element. 
People do not always have access to that. A case in point is the h*- 
creators which create body markup but do not alter the contents of 
the head element.
4. A seemingly easy solution is to put an <a> element somewhere in 
the microformatted content that points back to the XMDP. This 
fulfills the initial practical question raised initially but adds <a> 
elements, an addition some find aesthetically displeasing.
It seems another outcome of all of this would be to consider some 
simple extension to the XMDP spec that allows it to be linked from an 
<a> element with discussion focusing on how that would work.
Bud