#microformats 2021-02-20

2021-02-20 UTC
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@jackyalcine Microformats can handle this! (twitter.com/_/status/1362917461532704776)
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btrem JackyAlcin[m] What is the microformat that can handle opening hours? I was under the impression that it wan an effort that got started, but never finished.
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btrem http://microformats.org/wiki/opening-hours
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jacky I figure that it could be done via h-event (making every open day an event that recurs)
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btrem Hmm, what would the event p-name be?
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jacky don't know if it needs one
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jacky like what's gained by defining one?
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btrem Well, what would a consuming application have to consume?
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btrem Just dt-start and dt-end?
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jacky solely the dt-start and dt-end
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btrem I guess I'm wondering if a consumer would be able to make sense of that.
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jacky it could be defined as a feed (on the fly) so people can ask for what time ranges as pagination options
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jacky date ranges, rather
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jacky by not specifying names, you could just show a "blocked off" region versus having to worry about munging names together (if they're closed for lunch, for example)
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jacky it'd be nice to have a dedicated format for this
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jacky but I think that (with some additional plumbing) could give the needed info for things
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btrem I looked into a few months ago, when I was mucking around with a format for food menus and an include pattern.
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btrem I agree, it'd be nice to have something. At the time, I couldn't really come up with an opening hours spec that would work for the seemingly endless variations.
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btrem Part of the problem is that visible data is rarely in a machine readable format, so opening hours vocabularies rely on hidden data, and the visible and invisible tend to fall out of sync.
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jacky that makes sense
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jacky especially since doing stuff like this isn't really "boilerplate" for most
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jacky I do notice Square making this easier for shop owners (since they directly are involved in that - versus stores going in to first vouch for a place then keep those hours in sync)
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btrem There is a need. It is *very* common for businesses to discover that the hours that Google or Yelp *think* they are open are wrong.
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btrem So businesses must be vigilant in entering the same data over and over again.
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btrem And people who rely on Google/Yelp/et. al. are likely to be steered wrong when it comes to whether a business is open.
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btrem It was a regular feature of the restaurants where I use to work. Then the pandemic hit.  :(
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jacky :(
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btrem Yeah, when it started, we were told a few months and everything would be sorted out. I was less optimistic. I figured the better part of 2020, *maybe* a bit into 2021, but it'd be nearly over. I did not imagine it would go on for this long. And I was being intentionally pessimistic.
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btrem There won't be any hard end to this catastrophe. It will sort of gradually get better. But it's hard for restaurants e.g. to determine "ok, now we should start rehiring." So things are very tenuous.
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btrem I feel really awful for the kitchen people, who did not get any benefits, no payout, no unemployment, nothing.
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btrem Ok, enough whining from me.
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btrem Back to figuring out why my webmentions are not working.
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[tantek] btrem, these are all legitimate concerns. especially for those with less support. ok to chat more about that in #indieweb-chat
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[tantek] jacky, perhaps the "simple" approach to opening hours is treating it as every venue's own calendar
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btrem I've already said I'm done. I'm back to banging my head against the wall re: webmentions.
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btrem jacky I thought that was what you were suggesting earlier.
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btrem I suppose maybe a series of h-events with no title or summary.
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jacky yeah
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btrem So a business would have to use some sort of cal app that can generate h-events.
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jacky yup
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@fluffy Tough choice #microformats (twitter.com/_/status/1362950974503985155)
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btrem If only the folks who make the software could be convinced to allow clients to export data in open formats. I think that'd be a tough sell.
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jacky _or_ the site can transform its own mf2 into a iCalendar-compatible feed (a bridge that lets other clients 'just work')
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btrem Can a iCalendar feed have a name? Then you could name the calendar "opening hours".
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tantek edited /opening-hours-brainstorming (+225) "calendar of unnamed events" (view diff)
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btrem That seems way too easy. What's the catch?
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jacky btrem: why does it need a name?
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jacky I _think_ they can tho
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[tantek] jacky, stubbed this, feel free to expand: https://microformats.org/wiki/opening-hours-brainstorming#calendar_of_unnamed_events
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[tantek] the iCalendar feed name is meant to be user visible / consumable, not something that consuming code should look for
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btrem Well, so e.g. Google or Yelp or a phone app would *know* that the feed tells you when the restaurant/bookstore/what have you is open.
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[tantek] if machine-based discovery was what you were attempting
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jacky I don't think I can edit that wiki yet
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jacky btrem: that could be done by doing a hard specification though
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jacky like <link rel="ical hours" href="$URL" />
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btrem What do you mean?
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btrem Oh, right. We chatted right by each other.
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jacky :)
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jacky [tantek]: I'd need an account, it mentions you as an admin that can grant me one :)
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btrem Hmm, this seems too easy. Like why didn't anyone think of it before? There *must* be something we're not thinking about.  :)
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jacky lol there definitely is
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btrem I'd very much like it if instead of <link> it were <div>. Visible data.
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jacky but potentially, the biggest issue is getting people on board to emitting this with mf2 first
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jacky I can see it then as `<a href="$URL" rel="ical hours" title="Open Hours">Open Hours</a>`
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btrem Or `<div class="h-x-hours"><span class="h-event">...`.
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jacky oh yeah for sure
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jacky I was thinking about the link to point to the feed that'd be on a store's homepage
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jacky that a reader could expose in its markup for a venue
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jacky (venue info: https://indieweb.org/venue#How_To_Publish)
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btrem Yeah. I just feel like a feed will be out of sync in situations were the it were maintained indepdent of the visible data.
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[tantek] looks like I can create an account, I need a place to message you the info jacky 🙂
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jacky slack works!
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btrem But yeah, a discoverable feed would be useful.
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tantek edited /Special:Log/newusers () "created new account User:Jacky: requested by user" (view diff)
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jacky 👀👀
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btrem edited /opening-hours-brainstorming (+213) "/* calendar of unnamed events */ suggests a type for opening hours" (view diff)
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btrem Yeah, I was trying to write up example code, and ran into a problem. How do you markup the time for a day? The datetime attribute can be just a time, but then how do you attach that to a day of the week?
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btrem I don't know if `datetime` can be shoehorned into an opening hours spec. Which is I think one of the long standing problems.
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jacky edited /opening-hours-brainstorming (+962) "/* calendar of unnamed events */ add example of using h-event for open hours" (view diff)
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jacky I just added an example that I think should satisfy both open and closed times
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jacky as well as even doing 'special events' (just change the URL under it)
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jacky we _really_ need anchor-specific parsing to be a concrete thing
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jacky It'd make that a lot easier than having to make a new page for everything
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jacky edited /opening-hours-brainstorming (+3) "/* calendar of unnamed events */ add bullet points" (view diff)
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jacky lemme know how that looks btrem
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jacky tried to keep it visible in the markup so it could read well in a browser but also show the needed info in mf2
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btrem The datetime attribute is incorrect. Gotta be 24 hours. So 18:00 not 6pm.
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jacky edited /opening-hours-brainstorming (+10) "/* Jacky's Idea for Rendering a Week of Hours */" (view diff)
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jacky edited /opening-hours-brainstorming (+4) "/* Jacky's Idea for Rendering a Week of Hours */ correct timestamsp" (view diff)
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btrem There are i18n issues, of course. Monday in en, lundi in fr, montag in de, etc. So how do we make them machine readable and i18n friendly?
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jacky that can be a per-page translation thing
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jacky tbh a lot of this doesn't have to be human-entered specifically
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jacky like this bit can be generated by a machine that follows an expected format
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jacky like it could be a table on the page
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jacky and if the event is described to fit a particular range, it can then handle the proper timestamping
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jacky that's why I leaned into using a h-feed because then it can use future and historical info from the machine
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btrem Not sure I follow. The problem with datetime is coming up with a machine readable version of human readable data as I see it.
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btrem Right.
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btrem I actually don't know much about h-feed.
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btrem So I think I need to read up on that so I can follow what you're doing.
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jacky it's like a wrapper of items (kinda like a collection) but meant to represent conventional feeds (like RSS but in HTML and a lot simpler imo)
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btrem I gathered that much.
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jacky http://microformats.org/wiki/h-feed has some info
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btrem I just never had any use for it. Or maybe I did but didn't realize it!
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jacky :D
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Loqi Tantek Çelik
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btrem Yeah, I know there are articles on the wiki. Like I said, I'll need to read up on and think about it a bit.
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jacky gotcha
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btrem This could be a game changer!
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jacky I'm interested in this myself tbh
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jacky re: opening hours - it could be used for conference layouts as well
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btrem A business could nest opening hours in their h-card, and a phone browser could tell a user "open right now" or "closed".
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btrem That would be a genuinely useful service for people, and thus I imagine attractive for publishers. I'd think.
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btrem jacky++
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Loqi jacky has 7 karma in this channel over the last year (111 in all channels)
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btrem for the h-feed ical idea!
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jacky oh that would be an excellent use case!
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btrem Yep. Like the way Yelp does it. Except Yelp often gets the hours wrong.
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jacky shoot, I could probably even do that for my site for 'office hours' / expect me to reply during this time kinda stuff
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jacky granted, it'd probably be a flag at first ;)
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btrem a flag?
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jacky like on my site saying if I'm around to talk or not
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jacky though I've been rewriting parts to make my homepage _also_ done via mf2 so it can pick and choose how to render things (on the presence of a property, for example)
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btrem Ah.
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btrem Well, it's 7:00pm here (I'm in U.S., pst, UT - 08:00). So I think I'll start wandering around in my kitchen getting some sort of meal going.
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jacky ha that's the same as me
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btrem I'm going to read up on h-feed and maybe try to create hours for the restaurants I used to work at. I find problems when I have real data to work with.
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btrem ...problems to solve...
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btrem West coast?
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btrem Whereabouts?
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jacky Yeah, I'm in the Bay Area
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jacky California
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btrem Seattle for me.
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jacky ah I haven't been there yey
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jacky *yet
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btrem Nor have I been to San Francisco.
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btrem Definitely on my list of things to do. I want to go the massive record store there. (I'm blanking on the name atm.)
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btrem Ok, nice chatting. I'm off to dinner. I'll be adding something to the wiki at some point, or chatting here, about the opening hours thingy.
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[tantek] Amoeba
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jacky o/
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btrem Yep, Amoeba. I will go there one day. And spend too much money. But not any time soon, because (a) pandemic, and (b) unemployment. But someday.  :)
pmlnr_test, pmlnr_test2, pmlnr_test3, hendursa1, pmlnr_test4, KartikPrabhu, pmlnr_test1, [KevinMarks], hendursaga, [snarfed], [tantek], [tw2113_Slack_], [fluffy], [Ramiro_Ruiz] and btrem joined the channel
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btrem I'm adding h-feed to my site I already had lists of h-entry, so I'm just adding the container microformat.
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btrem Does it make sense to have more than one h-feed on the site?
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btrem Like, on the home page, I have the 10 most recent articles. And on /articles/ is the list of all articles. And on /articles/2021/ all articles from this year. So can/should I have h-feed markup on each of those pages?
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KartikPrabhu yes. having more that one h-feed is fine
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btrem Thanks. :)
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KartikPrabhu it is also ok to have more that one h-feed on the same page, but not sure if readers do anything special with that
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btrem Interesting. I suppose at a minimum you'd need a p-name if there were more than one h-feed on a page.
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btrem Speaking of which, there's no .p-name on the home page because there's no convenient name. I could add one in the html and hide it via css, but is there any reason to? What is the value of .p-name in .h-feed?
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KartikPrabhu yes, it is good to markup a p-name specially in the multiple feed cas
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KartikPrabhu I think readers use p-name to display that name in as the feed title
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btrem Hmm, maybe I need to specifically name it on my home page, then. I think I need to read a bit more about h-feed, specifically what parsers do when there isn't a p-name.
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[KevinMarks] you can have an implied feed with multiple h-entry on a page; the h-feed is to add feed-level information, so the name, summary, photo
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[KevinMarks] also can do feed-level author instead of repeating it per entry
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