[uf-discuss] Date of Death in hCard

[John Beales]

Hi,

I'm kind of late commenting, but perhaps, because of its similarity to
the existing "bday" we should use "dday"?  Although, "died" is easier
to understand at first glance it could be construed as "died" = "at
the hands of another" or something.

Just my 2-bits, either way it'll be handy as I have a project coming
up involving dead people.

John

On 6/27/07, Andy Mabbett <andy at pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:
>
> There having been no comments, much less objections, I intend to proceed
> with this, using "died" as the property name, in five days from the time
> of posting.
>
> In message <JAxoJkdPuYbGFw6f at pigsonthewing.org.uk>, Andy Mabbett
> <andy at pigsonthewing.org.uk> writes
>
>
> >
> >There has been some previous discussion:
> >
> >  <http://microformats.org/wiki/vcard-suggestions#Deceased>
> >
> >of adding a "Date of Death (DoD)" field to hCard, but no development
> >work.
> >
> >I propose that we adopt one, immediately.
> >
> >IMPORTANCE
> >
> >Date of death is important in many ways:
> >
> >   *    It is a flag that the subject is deceased - but is more specific
> >        than a "deceased", "dead" or other tag (which may not even be in
> >        English).
> >
> >   *    It is significant in genealogy
> >
> >   *    It differentiates between two people of the same name, born on
> >        the same day.
> >
> >   *    When a user agent offers the ability to generate an iCal for the
> >        subject's birthday, it will allow the user-agent to warn that
> >        the birthdays will not occur or to simply decline to do so; or
> >        to alternatively generate a differently-worded "anniversary of
> >        birth" iCal.
> >
> >   *    It allows user agents to calculate the subject's age at death
> >        (where Date of Birth, DoB, is known)
> >
> >In short, it offers additional semantic richness.
> >
> >
> >EVIDENCE
> >
> >There are a plethora of DoDs published on the web; not least in almost
> >every Wikipedia biography for a dead person; Google finds about
> >1,520,000 for "died on" alo  .
> >
> >
> >NAMING
> >
> >The hCard DoB property is called "bday". A DoD property could therefore
> >be called "dday", or perhaps "dod", "death" or "died".
> >
> >
> >BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY
> >
> >   *    The addition of DoD would be fully backwards- compatible.
> >        Parsers (and publishers) may simply ignore it. Parsers which
> >        recognise it would simply ignore it when exporting vCards.
> >
> >   *    Its use would require a small change to the existing boilerplate
> >        wording:
> >
> >                using a 1:1 representation of vCard (RFC2426 [URL)
> >                properties and values in semantic XHTML.
> >
> >        to something like:
> >
> >                using a 1:1 representation of vCard (RFC2426 [URL)
> >                properties and values, with additional properties, in
> >                semantic XHTML.
> >        or
> >                using a 1:1 representation of vCard (RFC2426 [URL])
> >                properties and values, with an additional property for
> >                date of death, in semantic XHTML.
> >
> >        (A future modification of vCard may choose to implement a
> >        matching DoD field; however, this is outside the control of the
> >        microformats community, and vCard development appears to be
> >        stagnant. )
> >
> >   *    All current hCard documentation would remain valid, even before
> >        being updated.
> >
> >PROPERTIES
> >
> >The field's properties should be identical to those for "bday".
> >
> >
> >REQUEST FOR COMMENTS
> >
> >Is there any reason why DoD should not be included in hCard?
> >
> >Are there any preferences for the property name?
> >
> >Are there any preferences for the boilerplate wording?
> >
> >
> >NEXT STEPS
> >
> >As soon as a property-name is agreed, I propose to ask Mike Kaply to
> >kindly parse an hCard DoD field in Operator, and to seek agreement on
> >Wikipedia-EN to include DoD in biographical infobox templates (such as
> ><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Infobox_biography>, of which
> >there are already over 5,000 deployments alone).
> >
> >Parser authors may then wish to write code to calculate a subject's age
> >at death (and, indeed, the age of living subjects); and to export
> >"anniversary of birth" iCals (and, indeed, iCals for birthdays for
> >living people)
>
>
> --
> Andy Mabbett
> _______________________________________________
> microformats-discuss mailing list
> microformats-discuss at microformats.org
> http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
>