On 7/19/06 8:37 AM, "Frances Berriman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> http://cafe.elharo.com/xml/must-ignore-vs-microformats > > A friend of mine showed me this today. Macroformats, over Microformats. The article is terrible and about 90% incorrect. Unfortunately this is perhaps in due in some part to the IBM article which though decent overall, has some errors itself, and takes a walk through transcoding to XML and back which is interesting but perhaps unnecessary. The author of the "macroformats" article misses all the reasons that XML has failed on the Web, and all the specific design principles that have gone into microformats that were developed by learning from XML's failure. In fact, he continues to push several of these reasons as actual *plusses* for XML (namespaces, invalidity, etc.) There will continue to be plenty of folks banging there head against the wall and trying to push "plain old xml" (POX) on the Web, and they will likely continue to see the same amount of success as they have to date. What we can do to be helpful: 1. Dissect articles like this into a series of assertions/questions and put them on the wiki, e.g.: * "why would anyone write markup like this? It brings exactly nothing to the table." Perhaps put such assertions/questions on a page like: http://microformats.org/wiki/misunderstandings And make sure that each assertion/question has its own heading so that it automatically gets a fragment identifier permalink. 2. Debunk each assertion / and answer each question, e.g. Things brought to the table: a. The existing widespread knowledge, experience and toolsets of (X)HTML authoring as compared to XML. b. Ability to easily present to the user. Cross browser support of (X)HTML+CSS rivals that of POX+CSS. etc. see http://microformats.org/wiki/microformats for more Over time we'll debunk/refute/fisk such bad articles/posts to the point where anyone can reference the debunkings and respond to such posts with nothing more than a series of URLs. I know this may seem like a waste of time (like let people learn on their own, especially if they take the time to do such attacks as a comparison to homeopathy, sigh), but as microformats continue to grow in prominence, we owe it to the community, and to those who are new, to clarify misconceptions and misunderstandings. Thanks, Tantek P.S. If you're just looking for an easy response to debunk most POX efforts, use this one: "Accessibility. According to WCAG, when publishing on the Web you should use semantic XHTML elements (which microformats encourage) which accessibility tools have a chance of doing something with, not be making up your own elements which are meaningless to screen readers etc." The POX-crowd still have no answer to that, and it stems from the fundamental Tower of Babel / Namespaces mess which is unfixable due to cultural reasons. _______________________________________________ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss