Color properties

[adamkhan]

A feed could have its preferred color properties to help display it. My suggestion for their naming (prefixed by "c" for color):

• c-background
• c-text
• c-link
• c-hover
• c-active

[dshanske]

Since the feed is HTML, this would be a matter of reading the CSS for the feed. I don't think properties are required here.

[adamkhan]

@dshanske, one would need an entire browser to parse the CSS and derive from it these various color values.

[gRegorLove]

You would need to use one of the microformats2 prefixes (p-, u-, dt-, e-) for parsers to work with those properties, and/or a vendor extension.

Are there examples of feed readers that customize colors via some other properties (e.g. RSS or Atom properties)? Documenting the real world use-cases and existing formats is an important part of advancing new microformats2 properties.

[dshanske]

@adamkhan Have you seen this proposal? https://indieweb.org/whostyle

[dshanske]

I'm not against the idea per se, just not sure about it being a property.

[adamkhan]

@gRegorLove, thanks for responding. I'm new to microformats2 and didn't know there were set prefixes — which in itself is pretty cool, that the prefixes are also a standard. It seems these color ones would fit best under the existing "h-".

And you got it, I am indeed building a feed reader that customizes colors per feed!

@dshanske Thanks for the heads-up re whostyle — I'm looking into it.

[gRegorLove]

h- is for a root microformat, like h-entry for articles and notes, h-feed for a stream of posts, etc. (see list of vocabularies). What you're describing here is sort of an attribute of a feed, so it wouldn't be a separate h- microformat.

Even then, it's more of a styling attribute that's represented in a separate CSS file, not (typically) in the HTML itself. I mentioned existing formats like RSS or ATOM to see how they might already handle this type of styling, which could help guide if/how to best represent this as a microformat property.

Welcome to microformats! If you haven't yet, check out the microformats process. We're also on IRC if you have any questions about publishing or consuming microformats.

[adamkhan]

Also, I've just seen Apple's JSON format for Apple News — it's worth observing what they are doing, seems to me. See https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_news/apple_news_format.

[adamkhan]

You would need to use one of the microformats2 prefixes (p-, u-, dt-, e-) for parsers to work with those properties, and/or a vendor extension.

Are there examples of feed readers that customize colors via some other properties (e.g. RSS or Atom properties)? Documenting the real world use-cases and existing formats is an important part of advancing new microformats2 properties.

Probably the biggest real-world use-case would be Apple News. They have their own proprietary format — perhaps it's worth worth emulating those fields that AAPL decided they need in order to present feeds well.