Microformats and OpenURL
I hadn't run into microformats until Eric Childress called them to my attention. The idea is to mark up your HTML using XHTML to make it easy to parse, yet still human readable. This reminds me of the KEV (key encoded value) versions of OpenURL 1.0. Everything you refer to in an OpenURL needs to be defined in the OpenURL registry, and the KEV definitions are done in XHMTL, so they display nicely in a browser, but are tagged (mostly using the 'class' attribute) so they aren't that hard to parse.
Actually, some things, like metadata formats, are often defined twice in the registry, once for XML and the other for KEV encoding. This complicates some things. The code I posted last week tried to massage KEV journal metadata into the XML form. Since this is difficult to do automatically (and you aren't even guaranteed that there is a corresponding XML encoding), I've given up on that, simplifying the latest code somewhat. For display of KEV information the program now tries to read in the registry definition and uses the information there for descriptions, but doesn't try to send back valid context objects in XML.
--Th
Speaking of OpenURL and microformats it might be nice to position the new COinS convention for embedding openurls in XHTML span elements as a microformat.
Posted by: Ed Summers | July 27, 2005 at 15:58
Rather than try to push yaf (yet another format) I agree that it would make a lot more sense to consider working out an OpenURL microformat.
This (old!) article on Encoding OpenURLs in Dublin Core metadata reconciles an OpenURL string with DC metadata in an XHTML meta-tag, which also has its merits...
With a bit of editing, this discussion on COinS might also reveal what decisions were taken when with the format, which could be interesting for the historical record...
Posted by: Tony Hirst | August 05, 2005 at 18:27
Working on automatically generating openurl formatted microformat code from the REST output of the Ann Arbor District Library. I'm hunting for specs and a place where the discussion is centered. thanks Ed
Posted by: Edward Vielmetti | January 23, 2006 at 15:49