[uf-discuss] SOURCE+URL to indicate authoritative hCard (was UID+URL vs. VIA)

[Ryan Cannon]

On Feb 13, 2007, at 7:32 AM, Scott Reynen wrote:
>> SOURCE in vCard is essentially the same as self in Atom (AFAICT).
>
> I think SOURCE is actually closer to VIA in Atom, as "the source of
> the information provided in the containing element," which is why I
> suggested it.  As I understood the arguments between UID+URL and VIA
> (and I may well have missed some key points), UID+URL is good because
> it's already in vCard, but bad because not all UIDs point to more
> authoritative hCards.  And VIA is good because the source of
> information is always more authoritative than the derivative, but bad
> because it's not already in vCard.  So SOURCE+URL seems good because
> the source of information is always more authoritative than the
> derivative, and also good because it's already in vCard.

This makes a lot of sense to me: when X2V converts an hCard into a
vCard, it uses the hCard's location in order to specify a place
where the vCard (now offline), can look to update its information.

Manually setting SOURCE could changed this behavior. Instead of
telling a the vCard-consuming app to check back for more information,
it tells it a new location to check back to instead. Because it's
already been defined as a semantic equivalent, I'd still like to
see @rel="via" indicate SOURCE (in much the same way as @rel="tag"
indicates CATEGORY).

The behavior could work as follows:

1. If the hCard contains no links with @rel="via", you're done--set
    SOURCE to be the URL of the current hCard.
2. If hCard contains a link with @rel="via", download the resource.
3. If the new resource contains one hCard, go to 1.

I would also suggest that hCard support only a single source URL.

-- 
Ryan

http://RyanCannon.com