Microdata design philosophies

On Thu, 15 Oct 2009, Martin McEvoy wrote:
> 
> Microdata is not "Designed for humans first and machines second".

Actually, Microdata has very much been designed for humans first and 
machines second. In fact, to underscore how important humans are in 
Microdata's design, one member company of this working group has even gone 
so far as to do usability testing of several variants of Microdata, to see 
whether some of the proposals for changes to Microdata would actually have 
beneficial effects. (Some did, some didn't. I've since updated the spec 
based on what was learnt from those studies, as well as based on other 
feedback regarding how to make the language easier for humans.)


> Microdata is not "a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing 
> and widely adopted standards" (in fact quite the opposite really)

Microdata is just a syntax. There are a couple of data formats build upon 
existing and widely adopted standards (specifically the vCard and vEvent 
vocabularies, strongly influenced by hCard and hCalendar) that have been 
documented for use with Microdata, though.

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

Received on Thursday, 15 October 2009 21:01:25 UTC