[uf-discuss] geo and named locations

[John Allsopp]

Charles,

> My take on hCard's is that they do NOT have to represent "contact
> info".  (Although they can be used for that.)
>
> So using an hCard for the "Eiffel Tower" (as you mentioned in your
> example) would be OK.

I think this is where microformats and their "reuse [of] building  
blocks from widely adopted standards" can get tricky.

vCard says in its abstract

"for directory information for a white-pages person object"

"The profile is defined for representing and exchanging a variety of  
information about an individual"

hCard extends this to "contact information ... for people, companies,  
and organizations".

At present, we have three microformats associated with location (and  
closely associated with one another, via hCard)

geo
adr
hCard

Now, of course, geo and adr are derived from hCard, but the way I see  
it, they are also independent from it. Clearly a way of marking up  
addresses and geographic locations is required, and it does make  
sense that they be reused from hCard.  But adr and geo shouldn't be  
constrained by their role in hCard when used independently, and I  
don't think they are supposed to be - for example, I don't think they  
are restricted to being associated with contact information (though,  
"geo is a 1:1 representation of the "geo" property in the vCard  
standard" leads us to RFC2426 which says "This type specifies  
information related to the global position of the object associated  
with the vCard" - I guess that last bit doesn't apply when it is used  
independently from an hCard :-)

At the moment, we do have the explicit constraints on geo mentioned -  
that named locations MUST use hCard (which is what prompted this  
discussion ;-), and addresses should be used if they exist and are  
known (I take it that the adr format suffices here).

But, imagine you have the following

"Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated outside the Town Hall in  
Sarajevo"

Now, the Town Hall is a named location, for which we have geo  
information. If I wanted to mark this up with a geo microformat, do I  
need to also use hCard? Or is it only in the context of contacting a  
person company or organisation that this requirement exists?
Does it make sense ot use geo in this context at all? I'd say yes, as  
the definition of geo is very broad "a simple format for marking up  
geographic latitude longitude information", so its useful even if not  
in the context of contact information.

I know I am being a pedant, but I'm trying to clarify this as much as  
possible, because I am doing some presentations, workshops and other  
general evangelism of uf and I find geo and adr really good simple uf  
to use as example which go beyond the rel based ones, and I don;t  
want to set anyone down the garden path by giving them misleading use  
cases.

Thanks

j


John Allsopp

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