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<entry-title>XMDP origins</entry-title>

An essay by [[User:Tantek|Tantek Çelik]] on the origins of [[XMDP]]. To be wikified.

When I was working on [[XFN]] (effectively the first microformat), I specifically designed the underlying technology of XHTML Meta Data Profiles ([[XMDP]]) to *enable* all HTML rel/class additions/extensions (what would later become known as "microformats") to be *optionally* bound by URLs.  And not just any URLs, but URLs that were compatible with and looked like RDF vocabulary URLs that ended with a "#" and term name. This was a deliberate design decision on my part, because I knew that there would be those who preferred to define their terms with URLs.  Here is an HTML markup fragment that demonstrates this with the above-mentioned [[hCard]]:

<source lang=html4strict>
<html><head profile="http://microformats.org/profile/hcard">
<title>a document with hCards</title></head>
<p class="vcard"><span class="fn">Jeni Tennison</span> wrote an article, 
<cite><a href="http://www.jenitennison.com/blog/node/124">HTML5/RDFa Arguments</a></cite>, 
that compares and critically analyzes HTML5 and RDF approaches to representing and publishing data.
</p>
</html>
</source>

The terms "vcard" and "fn" which are used as class names are defined by the [http://microformats.org/profile/hcard hCard XMDP] and the respective URLs for those terms are created by referencing the fragment IDs in that document:

* vcard: http://microformats.org/profile/hcard#vcard
* fn: http://microformats.org/profile/hcard#fn

Thus providing the necessary URLs for any (meta)data system that stores/reasons about data based on vocabulary based on URLs (whether RDF or some other URL-based vocabulary store).

In practice, few people use XMDP profiles, well, except for at least the millions [http://wordpress.com Wordpress blogs] out there - just view source on them and you'll find: <code><nowiki>profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11"</nowiki></code> near the top of the page.

The point is that those that want to use profiles have the *option* of using them, while not burdening everyone else with doing so.

[[User:Tantek|Tantek]] 18:07, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

== see also ==
* [[XMDP]]

Return to xmdp-origins.

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