Haha . . . great find (resists urge to drop a standard smiley in here)

I reviewed a little bit, got about halfway down . . . began to skim a little . . . then it hit me.

Why do we need to complicate this more than it needs to be? We already have XHTML which can be extended to include any context you want, including emotions. A properly coded DTD could add context to

<happy>:-)</happy>
<sad>:-(</sad>
<bawdry>(_¦_)</bawdry>

I fear, like the optimum use of XHTML, if it ever takes hold only the Cliff Notes will make their appearance.

I was surprised to see the date on this. I was sure it was going to be April 1.

I'd have to see this in action. The human brain devotes an incredible amount of it's processing to recognizing and interpreting facial expressions and vocal inflection. Most of this passes subconsciously.

So getting anywhere with an emotionally descriptive language, would require

1. that humans understand emotion well enough to describe it verbally

2. that computers understand human emotion well enough to interpret it.

This strikes me as one of those cases where people are looking for an engineering solution to something that is not an engineering problem.

To wit, I quote Section 1.2

1.2 The challenge of defining a generally usable Emotion Markup Language

Any attempt to standardize the description of emotions using a finite set of fixed descriptors is doomed to failure: even scientists cannot agree on the number of relevant emotions, or on the names that should be given to them.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Now, when we pass the singularity and computers have the processing capacity to be as good at facial recognition and understanding emotion as humans are, then this *could* become an engineering problem. Nothing is impossible.

I read that standard few days back. I restrained to post it over (in past i posted notifications of many w3c recommendations ) here wasn't sure if anyone would be interested over WebmasterWorld regarding this standard.

I am glad you started this discussion. :)

The web is really going to change dramatically in few years. With machines having sense of idea of mood of writer , bringing exact content relation to required context is just very small portion of big gift which soon will be reality for all of us.

I originally assumed this would be a misplaced April 1st story from the title. LOL.

<h1 intentions="pure" face="deadpan" factor="1000">Expensive Keyword</h1>

It sounds like it'll be good for social media via plugins, how it can be measured is an interesting question. An aggregate of user emotions...

One more set of tags that will only confuse things more. Golly, just when I thought I had a grip on the last batch! <alt="sigh with despondency" />

I have to say... This is completely ridiculous. And I second pretty much every word of ergophobe's post above.

So now we're going to separate content into; Logic, Structure, Presentation, and Emotion? I shall be developer / psychiatrist.

Since writing began [insert date I didn't look up :) and tag to describe how I feel about that = sad, nonchalant], we have described, detected and interpreted emotion in written language based on the style of what's written and what we understand about ourselves and culture, and it works just fine. Adding blunt static tags that state "This is a happy sentence." seems to over simplify how we use language.

Of course this is not for, humans –it is for machines, and they'll need things simplified if they are going to be able to help us more with our decisions, it just this seems to be the lazy way to do it.

I suppose the upshot of this might be that my favourite decision engine will soon help me make a decisions based on what it knows will make me happy, or sad even!

– not keen.

then, once everything is marked up as <happy> <sad> <surprised> and so on, interpreting the emotion of any text will be trivial. And yet people, eternally credulous and gullible, will be amazed that machines can now "understand" emotions.

The one I would need most is <sarcasm>

I can't count how many times I have been jumped on for saying something sarcastically that was taken literally.

Sarcasm is hard to pull off in print a lot of the times... for me anyways.

In the little over 20 years that I've had access to the Internet, I've never felt a need for this beyond what a few spelled out tags or smileys can't convey.

<sarcasm>
The standards folks probably missed their publication data a bit :) . Should have been April 1st :o , would have been fun then :(
</sarcarsm>

I've seriously no intention of using this.

<emotion>
<category set="basicEmotions" name="Disgust"/>
<intensity value="1"/>
</emotion>

If "EmotionML" ultimately enhances voice browsing for the disabled and aged, great! But I'm far less keen on its applications for: "Opinion mining / sentiment analysis in Web 2.0, to automatically track customer's attitude regarding a product across blogs." (Read: Kiss more privacy goodbye.)

Currently, W3's Emotion-related "Incubator Groups" (EmoXGs) just look like "Navel-Gazing for Grants Groups" (NaG$).

If this is a joke, they spent a lot of time and effort putting it together.

Had to laugh at this though:

In the following example, Fred is annotated as being sad on 23 November 2001 at 14:39 hours, three minutes later than the absolutely positioned reference element.

<emotion id="annasJoy" date="2001-11-23T14:36Z">
  <category set="everydayEmotions" name="joy"/>
</emotion>
<emotion id="fredsSadness" timeRefURI="#annasJoy"
  timeRefAnchor="end" offsetToStart="3min">
  <category set="everydayEmotions" name="sadness"/>
</emotion>

With the exception of the previous post, note that every one of you are coding in valid XHTML requiring a custom DTD as described in post #2, making my point. :-)

Unless this is truly an April 1 prank, which I don't have time to investigate, if it is, I got pwned . . . again. LOL

Totally irrelevant to the topic, but how was my post any less valid than the others? (Inquiring minds and all that...)

He wasn't commenting on the post; he was commenting on the format of the XHTML markup.

but how was my post any less valid than the others?

You know, I wrangled over that, hoping it wasn't misread . . . <faux-pas>sorry,</faux-pas> that was not what I meant. You were citing an example that follows the draft, which actually makes it more relevant, the posts I was referring to cited XHTML code.

Sarcasm is hard to pull off in print a lot of the times... for me anyways.

Many 'in fun, jest, or sarcasm' comments do not translate to text, and something of which to always be mindful. The innocent misunderstanding starts flame wars in forums, and untold grief in businesses where the wrong person doesn't 'get it' (or is simply of obtuse personality). Next thing you know an internal email gets forwarded through the entire company (even nationally or internationally) - all over a totally unintended misinterpretation that then takes on a life of its own. (No shortage of deliberate misinterpretation out there either. Knives are sharp these days. When times are tough, keep your back to the wall.)