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Independent Data and Formatting with Microformats

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the web-fun dept.

IdaAshley writes to tell us IBM DeveloperWorks is running an article about how to best utilize microformats to embed data within standard XHTML code. From the article: "Microformats are a pragmatic approach to solving the issue of structured data on the Web. Is it as architecturally pure as XML-encoded data separated from its formatting through a mechanism such as XSLT style sheets? No. But I think this approach is a realistic middle step that will help build a more intelligent Web that is easier to use and provides better search and data integration."

4 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. META headers by RobotWisdom · · Score: 1, Interesting

    How much of this could have been done 5 years ago if the structured-HTML community hadn't blindly rejected META headers?

  2. Re:LISP by The_Wilschon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_tarpit

    --
    SIGSEGV caught, terminating

    wait... not that kind of sig.
  3. Re:LISP by fm6 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I know an old LISP hacker who simply doesn't understand all the fuss over XML. To him XML documents are just S-Expressions, only klunkier!

  4. I Was Going To Say... by Carcass666 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was going to say "I Don't Get It" but somebody beat me to it.

    I think the title of TFA "Separate data and formatting with microformats" is a bit ironic since it's about wedging your data into a web page in such a fashion that somebody might be able to pull it back out.

    If you want to make your data available there are all sorts of standard and more efficient ways of doing it than embedding it in the presentation layer. If somebody is going to all the trouble to create a parseable human-readable page, why wouldn't they go to about the same amount of trouble and make a far more efficient and standard RSS feed? What about the buzzword of the last few years, SOAP? Hell, what about XML?

    From TFA:

    How great is that? I have one script that reads a page with calendar items and exports it as XML. Then, I have another page that turns that XML back into calendar items. The original script can then read that page and come out with the same data. It's definitely a circular action.
    Okay, maybe it's not that great.
    I agree. This reminds me of the lame number tricks where you have somebody pick a number, add something, multiply it by something, blah blah blah, you take the result, divide it by 7 and then you give them their orignal number because you had it all set up ahead of time. If they screw up in their calculations, the trick doesn't work. In this thing, if you screw up embedding the text within the HTML (plenty of ways to do that), the trick doesn't work - and doesn't accomplish much even if it does.