comma or semicolon in geo (was: [uf-discuss] Operator: Microformat detection for Firefox 2)

[Benjamin West]

On 12/17/06, Brian Suda <brian.suda at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/16/06, Andy Mabbett <andy at pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:
>
> > It might be best of parsers accepted either; since some schemes use
> > comma (e.g. ICBM), others semicolon (e.g. geotag)
>
> At the moment the ';' semicolon should be used. There is an FAQ about
> it on the hCard-faqs page[1]. I'll update the hcard cheatsheet page
> accordingly.
>
> The ';' comes from the vCard RFC, because hcard is modeled after vcard
> the syntax was just reused. One issue with using a ',' instead is that
> a comma sets off a 'list' of properties, this can be seen in RDATE and
> others. And (if for some reason) there was a need for plotting 2
> dimensional figures, my first thought would be to just have a list of
> lat;lon: <abbr title="12;34,56;78,90;12">...</abbr> so i would prefer
> to stick with a single lat/long delimiter and continue using just the
> ';' to separate values.
>

However, most people probably use a comma.  See the coordinate studies
done at <http://awis.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_awis_archive.html>.

Ben