Comments on: Current issues with Microformats

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 20:00:55 +0000

@Rotem: Thanks, reading up on timezones was good for me :) I changed the two examples to be GMT-7 and PDT-7 (instead of UTC-7 which would be the same zone ;). Anyway, I’ll keep GMT because people know what I mean when I use it, UTC is not as widely spread from what I know (in Sweden). Good comment.

By: Rotem

Rotem — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 22:34:26 +0000

Hi, I’d just like to comment that (strictly speaking) GMT is not a time zone really. When people use “GMT” as a time zone, they actually refer to UTC+0. Time zone offsets always refer to UTC, so there’s no ambiguity.

That’s not to say I don’t agree with the article, I just felt like sharing some knowledge. =)

By: Yeah, Nyman’s back - Robert’s talk

Yeah, Nyman’s back - Robert’s talk — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 12:29:26 +0000

[...] We had a Geek Meet in June, and Emil did a good write-up of one of the presentations/talks in Current issues with Microformats. [...]

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 03:15:18 +0000

Thanks Robert. I’m looking forward to the next meetup.

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 11:23:12 +0000

Emil,

I’m glad that you had a good time! Thanks for the writeup; very good and well-needed (you beat me to it! :-)).

By: Martin

Martin — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 13:15:38 +0000

Emil,

That’s OK, I didn’t post with the intention of getting help. I just wanted to point out for everyone an acknowledged shortcoming of the design of the format, in addition to the ones you mentioned.

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 11:57:23 +0000

@Martin: Thanks.

I’m afraid I can’t help you with hCalendar, I have no experience with the format.

By: Martin

Martin — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 01:33:27 +0000

Thanks for an interesting article. You’re quite right about new techniques related to web development and the lack of a critical look at them, and so as a newish user of microformats, your article came at just the right time.

While the ideas behind microformats appeal to me no end, I found myself agreeing with many of your points, particularly the awkward use of the ABBR element and its title attribute.

Another specific limitation of the hcalendar format that I think is interesting to mention is its difficulty in handling recurring events - say, a radio show that happens at the same time every Monday evening. Not much progress, it seems, has been made in terms of establishing an agreed way handling evebts like this, that are not restricted to a specific ordinal date (like Wednesday 26 July 2006 at 20:00), but rather need only a day and time to be specified. The documentation at the microformats site admits this much.

So far, the ‘best’ I have come up with in terms of marking-up recurring events in a schedule is to use the specific date of the first day the event occurs after Summer/Winter Daylight Saving changes kick in, specifying the appropriate amount of hours after GMT for the start time, specifying a duration time for that event (rather than a definite finish time), and declaring the frequency with which the event recurs using the RRULE class. For example, for an event that happens every Wednesday at 20:00, lasting for 3 hours, I specify the first Wednesday after the time changes to Summertime (so, 20060329), GMT plus 2 hours (T2000+0200), and a duration of 3 hours (PT3H) to give me a dtstart value of “20060329T2000+0200/PT3H). Then I declare the RRULE class on an element with the FREQ class inside a child element, giving that child element the value ‘weekly’.

I have no idea if this is sufficient. Worse, does anybody? ;)

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 16:57:15 +0000

@Kevin Marks: Thanks for your comment. I’ll try to address the issues you bring up:

1) In what way is specifying what you mean by the class “vcard” diverging? I’d say that’s specifying what you mean.

2) I’m wasn’t aware that you could link to the profile too, but the way you do it is not really imortant, the point is that is will lead to hell if a namespace is not there.

3) No, that’s not readable. The time and timezone looks like a strange interval of some kind. Also, UTC or GMT? They are there by design, but by faulty design, title is not there for computers.

4) My fault at “extra elements”. I ment “extra divs and spans”, also known as “div hell” by some. I updated the paragraph to reflect that.

I’m well aware that microformats are like they are by design, it’s the design I’m commenting on.

By: Kevin Marks

Kevin Marks — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 09:02:23 +0000

Namespaces are not needed, because microformats work to converge meaning, instead of diverging it. Adding profile link is helpful, but doing it with meta instead of link is an odd suggestion. In practice not all publishers can change the head of a page, so microformats are deliberately not strict about this. This does make a little more work for people writing parsers, but a lot less for those publishing the formats. This is intentional, as successful formats have far more publishers than parser writers.
Regarding ISO 8601 and abbr, that is a legitimate semantic use - the title is more specific. If you don’t like the form of 8601 Tantek used there, ‘20060621T1030-0700′ can be expressed as ‘2006-06-21 10:30-0700′ which is broadly human readable too.
So, these don’t need fixing, they are by design. Microformats do not add extra elements to HTML, they re-use existing semantic elements to converge and add meaning.

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 22:39:46 +0000

@John Drinkwater: using the ins element is a great idea! It does not hit 100% on target but it’s very close.

My proposal is that the meta element gets required, yes. If it doesn’t exist on a site the crawlers will not have to continue past the block.

By: John Drinkwater

John Drinkwater — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 19:31:17 +0000

The approach microformats has used in some of their specs seems to me less semantic and a step back from where people are heading.

In respect to dates, would using ins tags to markup the time be suitable ? They already contain a datetime attr, and define what you are saying - “this has been inserted at/for”.
I cant really see using the class attr for yet more data.

For the meta proposal and parsers/bots, I presume sites without the meta tag should ignore classes as a special case?

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 22:58:05 +0000

@Richard Conyard: Why not fix them? The fixes I propose are one line each and they make is easier for everyone involved. Except the specwriters…

By: Richard Conyard

Richard Conyard — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 13:40:48 +0000

Of the parts you mention I don’t think you’re issues with Microformats are likely to be addressed. At present they are semantics for the rest of us, for proper semantics RDF and OWL would appear to be better options.

By: SitePoint Blogs » Jul 3, 2006 News Wire

SitePoint Blogs » Jul 3, 2006 News Wire — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 20:46:43 +0000

[...] Current issues with Microformats Emil Stenström points out some of the downsides of microformats (e.g. they don’t use namespaces), and suggests how they might be addressed (e.g. meta tags to declare microformat versions in use). (tags: microformats) [...]