[uf-discuss] Getting started with microformats

[Graham Higgins]

On 17 Aug 2006, at 14:03, Ciaran McNulty wrote:

>> I did think about using the "agent" field --- unfortunately, in this
>> instance John Smith is (in real life) an agent ...
> The vCard 'agent' field strongly means that the enclosed vCard is  
> an assistant or proxy of the main vCard, it doesn't mean 'agent' in  
> any of the other senses of the name.

Well yes, that is strictly true in the context of RFC 2426 but it  
does seem to be a somewhat infelicitous choice of label, given that  
it is a user-facing data structure.

> " This type typically is used to specify an area administrator,  
> assistant, or secretary for the individual associated with the  
> vCard. "

Thanks for drawing my attention to that, fie on me for missing it the  
first time through.

> A key characteristic of the Agent type is that it represents  
> somebody or something that is separately addressable.

Just in case I've misunderstood: in this context, does your  
understanding of the term "addressable" yield any special meaning  
beyond the generic "capable of being manipulated independently"? The  
term doesn't seem to be defined any more precisely in the RFC and I  
rather hoped to be able to provide the URI of an hCard for transclusion.

Anyway, reporting back: thanks for the assist. I now have a chunk of  
XHTML which can be processed by Brian Souda's xhtml2vcard parser  
(mostly) correctly - the hcard owner is incorrectly assigned the  
agent's title --- the agent template of the xsl stylesheet is  
commented out with a remark referencing further work to be done.

The XHTML can also be processed (mostly) correctly by Tantek's  
favelet (which uses the technorati stylesheets) --- the agent fn is  
omitted from the vCard but I couldn't say whether this is expected  
behaviour. For my own purposes, I rectified the omission by adding it  
in a note.

Thanks again,

Graham.