xoxo-ja
XOXO 1.0: Extensible Open XHTML Outlines
XOXOとは、標準的なXHTMLで書かれたシンプルでオープンなアウトラインフォーマットで、(X)HTML, Atom, RSS, そしてarbitrary XMLに組み込むのに適しています. XOXOは microformat オープンスタンダードの一つです.
仕様ドラフト 2004-10-01
編者
作者
- Kevin Marks, Technorati, Inc
- Tantek Çelik, Technorati, Inc (formerly of Microsoft Corporation)
- Mark Pilgrim, IBM
- Morten W. Petersen
著作権
This specification is (C) 2003-2024 by the authors. However, the authors intend to submit (or already have submitted, see details in the spec) this specification to a standards body with a liberal copyright/licensing policy such as the GMPG, IETF, and/or W3C. Anyone wishing to contribute should read their copyright principles, policies and licenses (e.g. the GMPG Principles) and agree to them, including licensing of all contributions under all required licenses (e.g. CC-by 1.0 and later), before contributing.
特許
この仕様はロイヤリティーフリーの特許方針に帰属するものです。特許方針に関してはW3C Patent PolicyやRFC3667、RFC3668をご覧下さい。
Preamble
When we were discussing Attention.xml, Tantek pointed out that XHTML has everything necessary for semantically expressing outlines and blogroll-like subscriptions in an XML format that is both interactively renderable by browsers and parsable by strict XML engines. This page is here to discuss this idea.
Name
XOXO stands for eXtensible Open XHTML Outlines, and is pronounced variously as 'ecks oh ecks oh', 'zho-zho', or 'sho-sho'.
Abstract
XOXO is one of several microformats. This specification defines a new XHTML document type that is based upon the module framework and modules defined in Modularization of XHTML (XHTMLMOD). The purpose of the XOXO document type is to serve as the basis for XHTML friendly outlines for processing by XML engines and for easy interactive rendering by browsers.
The XOXO Document Type
The XOXO document type is made up of the following XHTML modules. The elements, attributes, and minimal content models associated with these modules are defined in "Modularization of XHTML" (XHTMLMOD). The elements are listed here for information purposes, but the definitions in "Modularization of XHTML" should be considered definitive. In the on-line version of this document, the module names in the list below link into the definitions of the modules within the current version of "Modularization of XHTML".
body, head, html, title
a
dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li
meta
style element
style attribute
link
Attribute compact on ol and ul
The XOXO Profile
See xoxo-profile for the XMDP profile of XOXO which defines the XOXO values for the class attribute.
Simple XOXO Fragment
Markup
<ol class='xoxo'> <li>Subject 1 <ol> <li>subpoint a</li> <li>subpoint b</li> </ol> </li> <li>Subject 2 <ol compact="compact"> <li>subpoint c</li> <li>subpoint d</li> </ol> </li> <li>Subject 3 <ol> <li>subpoint e</li> </ol> </li> </ol>
Sample Rendering
1. Subject 1 a. subpoint a b. subpoint b 2. Subject 2 3. Subject 3 a. subpoint e
Usage of 'compact' attribute
Note the use of the 'compact' attribute to indicate that the subpoints of the headline "Subject 2" are not in an expanded state. The absence of the 'compact' attribute elsewhere indicates that the other headlines are in an expanded state.
Possible Default Style Rules for Sample Rendering
ol.xoxo { list-style:decimal; } ol.xoxo ol { list-style:lower-latin; } ol[compact="compact"] { display:none; }
More Simple Examples
MarkP has a set of examples that demonstrates both the simplicity of the markup and the presentational richness that is possible:
- simple XO file that can be embedded directly into an XHTML page
- XO with nested groups, also directly embeddedable in XHTML
- XO as a standalone XHTML page (valid XHTML)
- XO as a standalone XHTML page, styled with CSS (also valid XHTML)
- Chris Holland Outline Helper: tweaked one of above samples, yanked CSS for simplicity, added reference to outlines.css and outlines.js, pasted a few different combinations of ul/ol/li with the compact attribute.
- in trying to comply with semantic principles the "compact" attribute to ol and ul elements is what drives the display state. Via scripting, i'm setting classes on containing li element for added styling flexibility, though CSS Gurus might be able to replace "li.expanded" in outlines.css with some other CSS selector that says "select an li node that contains an ol node with a 'compact' attribute set".
Properties of Outline Items
Outlines typically consist of a hierarchy of points and subpoints. Each of those points (outline items) itself may have some properties (AKA attributes or metadata) that need to be represented. Perhaps the most common additional property on outline items in practice is the URL as demonstrated in Mark Pilgrim's examples above. Even the text label/title of an outline item could be considered a common property. A few such common properties:
- text
- description
- url (often called xmlurl or htmlurl; sometimes called permalink)
- title
- type (hint of the MIME type of the resource indicated by the URL)
In general, properties on an outline item <li>
are represented by a nested definition list <dl>
. Strictly speaking, it is the first <dl>
inside the <li>
and before any following <ol>
, <ul>
, or <li>
, e.g. here is an item "item 1" with a description property (the subpoints are there purely as a point of reference to an earlier example).
<ol class='xoxo'> <li>item 1 <dl> <dt>description</dt> <dd>This item represents the main point we're trying to make.</dd> </dl> <ol> <li>subpoint a</li> <li>subpoint b</li> </ol> </li>
Special Properties
There are a handful of special properties which we are able to represent more directly and conveniently with the semantic XHTML building blocks that we have included, instead of terms in a definition list. Mostly taken from the above list of common properties, these are:
- text, url, title, type, and rel (short for relationship)
If we were to represent them simply as definition terms (including the "description" property from the previous example), they might look something like this:
Example for the sake of discussion only / not a canonical XOXO example:
<ol class='xoxo'> <li> <dl> <dt>text</dt> <dd>item 1</dd> <dt>description</dt> <dd> This item represents the main point we're trying to make.</dd> <dt>url</dt> <dd>http://example.com/more.xoxo</dd> <dt>title</dt> <dd>title of item 1</dd> <dt>type</dt> <dd>text/xml</dd> <dt>rel</dt> <dd>help</dd> </dl> </li>
However, by taking advantage of the semantic <a href>
element, we are able to dramatically simplify the common cases that utilize these properties. From a parser's perspective, this applies to the first <a href>
element directly inside the <li>
.
Actual XOXO Example:
<ol class='xoxo'> <li><a href="http://example.com/more.xoxo" title="title of item 1" type="text/xml" rel="help">item 1</a> <!-- note how the "text" property is simply the contents of the <a> element --> <dl> <dt>description</dt> <dd>This item represents the main point we're trying to make.</dd> </dl> </li>
Any other properties are simply added to the definition list in the same way as the "description" property.
Publishing XOXO
XOXO may be published in two forms, valid XHTML, and simple well-formed XML.
Valid XHTML XOXO
A valid XHTML XOXO page is a complete XHTML document.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <title>XOXO page</title> </head> <body> <ol class="xoxo"> <li><a href="URL-one">TEXT-one</a</li> <li><a href="URL-two">TEXT-two</a></li> ... </ol> </body> </html>
Content-Type
Valid XHTML XOXO SHOULD be served with this Content-Type header for maximum browser compatibility.
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
It MUST be served with one of these Content-Type headers:
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Content-Type: application/xhtml+xml
Simple well-formed XML XOXO
The root element of a simple well-formed XML XOXO page is either an ol
or ul
with class name of "xoxo". This variant is ideal for syndication and transclusion into (X)HTML pages with AHAH.
<ol class="xoxo"> <li><a href="URL-one">TEXT-one</a</li> <li><a href="URL-two">TEXT-two</a></li> ... </ol>
Content-Type
Simple well-formed XML XOXO SHOULD be served with this Content-Type header:
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
It MUST be served with one of these Content-Type headers:
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8 Content-Type: application/xml Content-Type: application/xml; charset=utf-8
Examples in the Wild
This section is informative.
Too numerous to document thoroughly. Nearly every blogroll on the Web can be parsed as XOXO, since they are typically an unordered list of list items of hyperlinks, which is within the XOXO profile.
Implementations
This section is informative.
- Christian Neukirchen has written a xoxo.rb, a XOXO parser and generator for Ruby
- Odeo publishes users' subscription lists in XOXO. See Ryan King's list here.
- Les Orchard has written a nice XOXO outline editor in javascript.
- http://homepage.mac.com/ctholland/thelab/outlines/ is a great demonstration of dynamic interactive XOXO with use of "compact" and DHTML to collapse/expand.
- http://tool-man.org/examples/sorting.html is a great demonstration of drag and drop sortable XOXO lists with javascript and CSS.
- http://www.opendarwin.org/~drernie/xoxo-datatypes.html Mapping XOXO to Mac OS X property lists
- single line of rails to convert XOXO to HTML
Sample Code
- See the xoxo-sample-code page for open source sample code to read and write XOXO files.
- See also the xoxo-compact-sample page with source for CSS and JS that alters the look and feel of some very plain XOXO to have twiddlable triangles for nested lists that respect the compact attribute as well.
XOXO Schemas
This section is informative.
Note: these may be out of date and require updating to reflect the use of <dl> for annotating XOXO items with arbitrary properties.
References
Normative References
Informative References
This section is informative.
- Attention.xml
- VoteLinks
- XHTML 1.1
- OPML 1.0
- Contributed from http://developers.technorati.com/wiki/XOXO
Similar Work
- XHTML Outlines - DannyAyers independently came up with idea in 2003 October (just a month or two before Kevin and Tantek independently came up with XOXO) to use a simple profile of XHTML to semantically represent outlines using existing building blocks from XHTML.
- XOW - making them editable, producing RDF and bookmark lists from them (DannyAyers)
Related Reading
- Patrick Logan on why OPML and a Microsoft Lists extension are both unnecessary.
- Dr. Tao Chen on why it is better to use XOXO than OPML going forward
- Questionable Content comic #493 - apparently the Faye character is a fan of XOXO.
Promotional Materials / Schwag
- There is an entire XOXO clothing and accessories line. Buy XOXO stuff online.
Discussions
This specification is a work in progress. As additional aspects are discussed, understood, and written, they will be added. There is a separate document where we are keeping our brainstorms and other explorations relating to XOXO:
- See xoxo-brainstorming for additional thoughts on how to use XOXO for specific uses.
- See also blogs discussing this page.
Q&A
- If you have any questions about XOXO, check the xoxo-faq, and if you don't find answers, add your questions!
Issues
- Please add any issues with the specification to the separate xoxo-issues document.