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Show HN: Business.txt - Standard Proposal

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Re: Show HN: Business.txt - Standard Proposal

#4

Post by tommoor »

I think this usecase is already covered very well by microformats and the various metadata standards that already exist and are supported by Google, Facebook et al.

I'm not sure the argument that these are too complicated for non-developers really works here, after all uploading a file to the root of a web directory is likely also too complicated...

Re: Show HN: Business.txt - Standard Proposal

#5

Post by citricsquid »

Avalaxy wrote: post #3

Wouldn't it be easier if this were XML instead of plain text? I assume the goal is that software can easily interpret the data.

If everything follows the format (name: value) I can't see a reason why machine parsing would be difficult, I would guess the problem with XML (or any structure beyond plain text) is that it can be very daunting for technology inexperienced people.

Re: Show HN: Business.txt - Standard Proposal

#6

Post by fesja »

Avalaxy wrote: post #3

Wouldn't it be easier if this were XML instead of plain text? I assume the goal is that software can easily interpret the data.

We want to be a human friendly file. If we had a JSON or XML file, it would be too complicated for a non-developer to write or read it. On this way, I think it doesn't matter if the website is done in wordpress, drupla, static files, flash, etc. It's just a simple file.

Also, we are following the same pattern as the robots.txt file.

Re: Show HN: Business.txt - Standard Proposal

#8

Post by fesja »

tommoor wrote: post #4

I think this usecase is already covered very well by microformats and the various metadata standards that already exist and are supported by Google, Facebook et al. I'm not sure the argument that these are too complicated for non-developers really works here, after all uploading a file to the root of a web directory is likely also too complicated...

Apart from the really complicated thing for non-developers, another thing I don't like from schema is that it seems to targeted to websites like Yelp or Foursquare; but not too the original local business website.

The owner of the local business is the one who knows which is the correct address, phone, opening hours, menu, etc. All the other websites (yelp, foursquare, google places) can be wrong. We just need the local business to tell the rest of the world which is the correct data.

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