[microformats-discuss] Referencing hCards

[Ryan King]

On Jul 17, 2005, at 1:04 AM, Brian Suda wrote:
>> Right. So, just spider XFN'ed links. So:
>>
>> 1. I link to you.
>> 2. You have an hCard on your homepage OR
>> 3. link to your hCard with rel="me"
>>
>> voila! distributed addressbook with XFN + hCard.
>
> XFN is a seperate microformat than hCard, so there is no implcation
> that XFN means hCard.

You're right, it doesn't. But the assumption is that the link refers  
to a page for that person and if a person has an hcard it will either  
be on that page or linked with a rel='me'.

> Spidering those links needlessly would generate
> more bandwidth,

But less than spidering all links.

> processor time, and execution time. I was looking for
> a way to say without a doubt, that on the other end of the link is an
> hCard.

Good luck. There's no way to do this reliably on the WWW.

> Since there is no way to do this with certainty this idea is
> moot. It was just a thought.

Who needs certainty? I think this could still be done without having  
certainty.

-ryan