#microformats 2025-12-19

2025-12-19 UTC
chrisaldrich, [schmarty], [aciccarello], [tw2113]1, gRegor, [Trevor_Morris], [jeremycherfas], [lazcorp] and btrem joined the channel
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btrem There's a proposed `task` micoformat, but it looks like it was forgotten/abandoned. Is that correct?
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[schmarty] sounds appropriate for a `task` 😂
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btrem :-D
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btrem I'm asking because I am trying to create todo/reminder content type in a Drupal site. And trying to come up with field names that would match existing practice, so the next person who comes along will have some idea of what's what.
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[schmarty] btrem: i think typically the advice when a new microformat is proposed (or in this case, unfinished) is to think first about the consuming case. what tool or service will be parsing these, and for what user purpose?
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btrem I don't know if any consuming use case tbh. I'm just trying to come with names that follow established practice.
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btrem So I'm not trying to establish the `task` mf. I'm just thinking about how I might create content types that would lend themselves to future (a)comprehension, and perhaps (b) extension.
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btrem I went first to the indieweb wiki, and didn't find much there. Then I went to the mf wiki. Then here. :)
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ulhar4409 part of me wants to ask if there's a particular reason you want it microformatted, since that is probably relevant to how it can be consumed and why to consume it
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btrem cf. my previous comment.
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[schmarty] without a consumer in mind, my usual advice is to not worry about microformats. 😄
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btrem I'
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ulhar4409 there's that too
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ulhar4409 h-event would probably be the most similar, otherwise
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[schmarty] i'd focus on the design for humans. if, along the way, i found a reason to make it machine-readable, for a specific consuming case, circle back around.
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btrem Problem is my framework, Drupal, which makes it exceedingly difficult to circle back around. Renaming machine names for fields is not quite impossible, but pretty close.
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[schmarty] my personal experience mapping to "close enough" microformats has been fun but not productive.
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ulhar4409 i sync a todo list on my email host's calDAV and i'm pretty the tasks are just weird events there
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ulhar4409 pretty sure*
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btrem I'm working on a months-long project to produce an icalendar feed, and the ical module is pretty restrictive about field names. I'm already a bit stuck. So I'm just spitballing at the microformats water cooler to see if I can avoid any future pain. ;-)
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btrem BTW, I'm not real fond of ical/webdav. But I'm stuck with it.
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[schmarty] when it comes to microformats you'll already be mapping your internal representation out to HTML, so they don't need to match.
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[schmarty] (they = the names)
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[schmarty] since it seems like no microformats consumer of tasks exists, you're free from any need to constrain yourself to an existing vocabulary 🌈
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btrem True. But it's easier when they do. https://btrem.com/2025/01-mf-front-matter-1-vocabulary
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[KevinMarks] The microformats process page gives a decent sequence of things to try while creating a new data structure, even if it doesn't become a microformat https://microformats.org/wiki/process
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btrem Ugh. My page has a broken link. :(
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btrem I think, at the end of the day, I need to propose changes to the date_ical module, so that it's more flexible for me and everyone else.
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[KevinMarks] There is some task - oriented stuff in Activity Streams - I think JIRA will still export a task list as AS1. I'm not sure if it interoperates with others. 0
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btrem There's some sort of VTODO thing that's apparently connected to the dreaded icalendar set of formats. Gah. I wish there were something better.
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[KevinMarks] The original hCalendar mapped through the iCal formats without inspecting too much - h-event was based on what we learned form that.
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[KevinMarks] One thing we ditched was repeating events as they were too hard to get right
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btrem While I have a few people's attention: does anyone know of a page that documents the carddav format? I've found caldav, but not carddav. The best I've discovered is https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6352 which doesn't provide a complete example.
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btrem I would really like to provide the very non-techie community that is part of the coop building where I live with contact info that they can subscribe to in their email service/program of choice.
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[KevinMarks] Also there are lots of todo and task formats out there. GTD, todo.txt, scrum, you name it, so converging them is hard
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btrem Indeed.
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[KevinMarks] I'm very out of date on this but ~20 years ago what we found working on Google Contacts was that CRUD can be really bad for address book data, as different apps card about different bits of it.
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[KevinMarks] *care
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ulhar4409 nvm, tasks are not "weird events"
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[KevinMarks] For example, when Apple synced to the Gmail CardDAV, iPhones got a contact card for everyone they'd ever cc'd or been cc'd by. The iPhone users didn't want this in their contacts app, which was primarily for making phone calls and didn't need 5 false positives for Matt or whatever. So they deleted them. Apple synced the deletions back to Gmail, and then email autocomplete broke on the Gmail side.
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[KevinMarks] Which is why the Google People API still has both a "Contacts" and "Other Contacts" endpoint
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gRegor Heh, wow
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ulhar4409 i found some info on icalendar VTODO (tasks representation) if it'd be of interest
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ulhar4409 https://icalendar.org/iCalendar-RFC-5545/3-6-2-to-do-component.html
[jeremycherfas]1 joined the channel
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[social] This was a gem of a history background. [KevinMarks]++
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Loqi [KevinMarks] has 2 karma in this channel over the last year (27 in all channels)
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btrem [KevinMarks]++ just saw that. It really is a gem of a history.
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Loqi [KevinMarks] has 3 karma in this channel over the last year (28 in all channels)
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btrem Thanks everyone for discussing event vocabulary stuff. Gotta go to my paying job now.
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[tantek] poor implementation and lack of real world testing on both Apple and Google's part there [KevinMarks]
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[tantek] also underspecified standards. unlikely CardDAV considered those user interactions
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[tantek] ulhar4409 there was some early (mf1) VTODO work on the microformats wiki that did not go anywhere, because again, no consuming code use-cases emerged (not enough for anyone to bother coding at least)
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[tantek] +1 to [schmarty] and ulhar4409 are saying about without a consuming use-case, do not spend the time trying to figure out microformats markup for something.
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[tantek] we have learned this by experience. without a consuming use-case (and implementation) to "close the loop", then purely publish-only solutions generate more garbage/noise than signal, and potentially make the situation WORSE for future microformats development
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ulhar4409 I might make a "public todo list" slash "public calendar" for cases where sticking an h-entry in a task would make sense
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ulhar4409 Like, if I plan to stream a project
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ulhar4409 (I've done commissions before and tracked progress in a public Trello board, but if I can get away with migrating that to my own site...)
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tantek edited /Main_Page (-65) "/* community */ rm irc: link dupe from main IRC page (send people there for the actual chat link)" (view diff)
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[tantek] alright it was a little hard to find because I think we pushed explorations off the home page?
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[tantek] !tell btrem there's a bunch of (old?) prior work on task / to-do microformats linked from here: https://microformats.org/wiki/exploratory-discussions#productivity_related
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Loqi Ok, I'll tell them that when I see them next
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[tantek] oh hey exploratory discussions is linked from the home page
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tantek edited /Main_Page (+39) "move new microformats to a new section for easier discovery" (view diff)