hCard history and extensions (was Re: [uf-discuss] Date ofDeath in hCard)

[Andy Mabbett]

In message <AD65D98B54D34C4282EE54757342469E9E1D8A at tsmail3.terpsys.net>, 
"Montgomery, Mike" <MMontgomery at TerpSys.com> writes

>I was under the impression that the purpose of hCard was to provide a 
>way to markup individual and organizational contact information.  If 
>this is the case, does date of death make sense to include?  In 
>general, I don't need to contact someone who is no longer living.

Note that the only mandatory field in an hCard is name; there is no 
requirement for any contact information to be included. It is there fore 
implicit that hCard can be used to mark up that fact that string of text 
identifies a person ("Fn") or organisation/ venue ("fn org"), and no 
more than that.

>If I'm wrong in the assumption that hCard is only for contact 
>information, please let me know.  It seems that the specification was 
>created for this purpose but is being applied to other purposes (which 
>I guess isn't necessarily a bad thing).

It certainly isn't a bad thing, and its the default behaviour in a 
number of cases.

Consider, for instance a geo microformat, wrapped in an hCard with jsut 
an "fn org", as a labelled waypoint - no contact info, but useful 
semantic information.

-- 
Andy Mabbett