[uf-dev] Adding hCa* properties that aren't encoded in the HTML

[brian suda]

In X2V there are afew minor tweaks we needed to included due to
discrepencies between the RFC and the examples in the RFC. Namely, the
FN, N issue. X2V will attempt to extract an N value from an FN value,
that is because N is required, but examples omit this, so we attempted
to get the best of both worlds. This leads me to my question...

Can/Should transforming applications add additional information NOT
specified in the HTML, even if the data is the same, except in a
different format/representation?

Two examples with very different meanings:

LOGO/PHOTO can either be a URI or the BASE64 encoding. Now when X2V
transforms the hCard to a vCard is does NOT attempt to convert a URI
referenced image into its BASE64 representation. The apple address book
has a spot for an image, but does not honor URLs, windows address book
doesn't have any spot for images (atleast in my older version). So any
URL reference to an PHOTO/LOGO is lost completely. If X2V DID convert
image URLS to the base64 encoding, then atleast the Apple address book
would include it, but it adds complexity to X2V and bloats the vCard.

GEO latutide and longitude points are not always included in an address,
but with the help of some web services it is possible to GET a LAT/LON
for a given address. This is an alternative representation of the
address. Should /Can applications like X2V add LAT/LON if it is NOT
already included? I see no harm in giving more value to the vCard.

Am i missing something, or should transforming applications JUST deal
with the exact data they are given? I won't comment on my woes with
Microsoft Office's attempts at being "helpful", so i could see where
making assumptions could be bad - althought extracting a Lat/Lon from an
address is not an assumption really.

The reason i brought this up, is a simple application/idea i have been
kicking around. This would extract a vCard from an hCard, then pass the
Lat/Lon to another webservice API and map those points to something like
Google Maps. So conceivably, a conference webpage with all the speakers
marked-up with hCard could EASILY be converted to push-pins on a map,
all with one bookmarklet and alot of webservices.

Any thoughts?
-brian