1 Reply by pigsonthewing

  • pigsonthewing
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Re: Announce: Microformat for marking-up taxonomic names in HTML

It is proposed to create a formula (a "microformat" http://microformats.org) for marking-up, in HTML, the names of species (and other ranks, varieties, hybrids, etc.).

Microformats are a way of adding simple markup to human-readable data items such as events, contact details or locations, on web pages, so that the information in them can be extracted by software and indexed, searched for, saved, cross-referenced or combined.

More technically, they are items of semantic markup, using just standard (X)HTML with a set of common class-names. They are open and available, freely, for anyone to use.

The proposed format will respect all existing biological taxonomies, and is not intended to change or supplant any of them - it merely provides webmasters with a method of either:

   1)   marking-up a taxonomical name (or taxon-common name pair) in
        such a way that its components can be recognised by computers

or

   2)   marking up a common name, so as to associative with it a
        taxonomical name, in such a way that the latter's components can
        be recognised by computers

For instance, if I mark up a list of common names on a page I maintain:

   http://www.westmidlandbirdclub.com/staffs/tittesworth/latest.htm

using that microformat, a visitor might have browser tool which lists all the species on the page, sorted into alphabetical order within taxonomic class, or in taxonomic order, and then creates links to, say (for Joe Public) their entries in Wikipedia, or the British Trust for Ornithology website, or (for scientists) some academic database of the user's choosing.

Early thoughts on the format are on an editable "wiki", here:

        http://microformats.org/wiki/species

Please feel free to participate - the proposal needs both messages of support (particularly from people or organisations who have websites on which they might use them) and, especially, comments and constructive criticisms - does the proposal understand and use taxonomy correctly; is the terminology right, are there any omissions or overlooked, unusual naming conventions?

You can use the above wiki, or the microformats mailing list:

        http://microformats.org/wiki/mailing-lists

and/ or please feel free to notify other interested parties.

Thank you.

-- 
Andy Mabbett
Birmingham, England

2 Reply by charlesroper

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  • charlesroper
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Re: Announce: Microformat for marking-up taxonomic names in HTML

This is a really interesting and useful idea and I am fully supporting it (where I can). I've started by contributing to the wiki. We use the hCard microformat on our county recorders page.

One of the questions people often ask about microformats is "why"? What problem are they trying to solve? The way I look at it is in terms of semantics; microfomats take plain words (or other data) and convey meaning upon them that computers can then recognise. If a computer can recognise words as being the name of a species, there's all sorts of useful and interesting things that can then be done automatically. The other key aspect of microformats is that humans can readily read them too, given a relativaly basic understanding of HTML.

For instance, say you've got a wildlife weblog. By marking up the species names in a standard way, a computer can relatively easily parse the blog and extract the species names automatically, thus producing a running species list from that blog. Imagine being able to parse all of the species names from local websites in your area. I know for a record centre, being able to read in, manipulate and make use of that data would be amazing. Without being marked-up with a microformat, species names just sit in HTML as plain text and are much less useful.

So I'd urge everyone to pledge their support to the species microformat. The thing is with standards, you want to get in there as early as possible so that endless wheels aren't reinvented. We have that opportunity now. So to pledge your support, post here or send an email to Andy or contribute to the species microformat wiki or join in the wider microformats discussion.

Charles Roper
Digital Development Manager | Field Studies Council
http://www.field-studies-council.org | https://twitter.com/charlesroper | https://twitter.com/fsc_digital

charlesroper's Website

3 Reply by charlesroper

  • charlesroper
  • charlesroper
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Re: Announce: Microformat for marking-up taxonomic names in HTML

By way of demonstration, I thought I'd upload a screenshot of microformats in action. Take at look at this screenshot. What I've done here visited our county recorders page and clicked the Microformats bookmarklet. Because I have marked up the details of our county recorders using the hCard microformat, the code in the bookmarklet is able to find the names and addresses. If I click on any of the names you can see in the window, they get saved as a vCard, which I can then easily import into Outlook. Neat and useful.

Now imagine the something along the same lines but with species names. The applications are almost endless. Then imagine a microformat for biological records. Many of the microformats standards are already in place: hCard for individuals' details, hCalendar for dates, geo for spatial information. With the addition of species you've almost got a whole biological recording microformat framework.

Charles

Charles Roper
Digital Development Manager | Field Studies Council
http://www.field-studies-council.org | https://twitter.com/charlesroper | https://twitter.com/fsc_digital

charlesroper's Website

4 Reply by pigsonthewing (edited by pigsonthewing 29-09-2006 13:58:49)

  • pigsonthewing
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Re: Announce: Microformat for marking-up taxonomic names in HTML

charlesr wrote:

imagine a microformat for biological records.

You've read my mind! I envisage each date's entry on, for example, http://www.westmidlandbirdclub.com/ladywalk/latest.htm being marked up in a similar way.

Thank you for your support.