[whatwg] microformats incompatible with WebApps 1.0 ?

Mon Dec 11 18:25:46 PST 2006

On Mon, 11 Dec 2006, Michel Fortin wrote:
> 
> Suggestion: we could allow the profile attribute on any element? The 
> profile would apply only to the concerned element and its descendants. 
> So this:
> 
>     <head profile="http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard-profile">
>     ...
>     <div class="vcard">
>      <a class="url fn" href="http://tantek.com/">Tantek Çelik</a>
>      <div class="org">Technorati</div>
>     </div>
> 
> could become this:
> 
>     <div profile="http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard-profile" class="vcard">
>      <a class="url fn" href="http://tantek.com/">Tantek Çelik</a>
>      <div class="org">Technorati</div>
>     </div>

Given that nobody does the former, why would anyone do the latter? Bear in 
mind that to all intents and purposes, the page looks and works exactly 
the same with or without the profile. Also bear in mind that enough 
content exists that doesn't use the profile="" attribute that 
implementations will always look for content regardless of its presence.

> In addition, we could maintain a global registry of short names for 
> profiles, so that we could write this as a shortcut:
> 
>     <div profile="hcard" class="vcard">
>      <a class="url fn" href="http://tantek.com/">Tantek Çelik</a>
>      <div class="org">Technorati</div>
>     </div>
> 
> And since profiles can now be applied on individual elements, there's no 
> real need to keep the redundant "vcard" class name since it could easily 
> be implied by the profile being specified on that element:
> 
>     <div profile="hcard">
>      <a class="url fn" href="http://tantek.com/">Tantek Çelik</a>
>      <div class="org">Technorati</div>
>     </div>
> 
> How is that?

It's one step away from:

     <div class="vcard">
      <a class="url fn" href="http://tantek.com/">Tantek Çelik</a>
      <div class="org">Technorati</div>
     </div>

...which would work just as well, and has the added advantage that it is 
compatible with how hCard is used today.

> > > What worries me most about the Wiki idea is that it'll make 
> > > conformance to HTML5 a moving target that would need to be 
> > > reevaluated each time a new class is added on the Wiki.
> > 
> > How is this different from conformance to HTML5 + profile-specified 
> > extensions?
> 
> What's different is that you have to care about conformance only to the 
> profile you're using, and no other. When new profiles are created, 
> adding new classes and link types, you know they won't bother you.

Except that in practice they will, because if suddenly your class name 
clashes with a new class name, regardless of whether we have "profile" or 
not, processors looking for that class name will start treating yours as 
one of theirs.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'