Re: UMarks - a universal bookmark system.

On Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:35:01 +0100
UMarks <info@umarks.org> wrote:

> I hadn't heard of XBEL, so I have checked it out in an attempt to
> answer your question.

It's a pretty well-known format for bookmarks, and is the native
bookmark format for several browsers. Revising XBEL to create a v1.2
compatible with existing software seems a much more productive route
than devising a new format.

> Firstly, it looks like it has been some time since XBEL was updated.
> Much of the documentation dates from 1998, and the last update to
> anything I could find was 2002. It doesn't seem to be under active
> development.

One man's "not under active development" is another man's "stable".

> Bookmarks have moved on since then, and this shows in the scope of
> XBEL. For example it lacks support for favicons, keywords or
> summaries; most of which are additions that have become more
> commonplace since the late 90's. There is a <metadata> tag where one
> could ostensibly capture some of this mind you.

There is a <desc> tag suitable for summaries. Keywords/tags can be
stored using <metadata> (there's an example of using <metadata> for
tags here - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/03/02/restful.html). There is
an "icon" attribute on <folder> and <bookmark> elements, though it's
not a URI, so may be of limited utility.

> I couldn't quite work out how a bookmark hierarchy was maintained,
> although I assumed it was by creating a nested arrangement within the
> file itself.

The same xml.com article I linked to above (which is the first hit on
Google for 'xbel example') contains an example with nested <folder>
elements.

-- 
Toby A Inkster
<mailto:mail@tobyinkster.co.uk>
<http://tobyinkster.co.uk>

Received on Friday, 3 September 2010 08:38:22 UTC