[uf-discuss] Identity-related hCards?

[Ryan King]

On Mar 1, 2007, at 6:25 PM, Joe Andrieu wrote:

> Ryan King wrote:
>> On Feb 20, 2007, at 12:23 PM, Scott Reynen wrote:
>>> And maybe that's because what you're describing is actually more
>>> specific that "related hCards" implies.  It seems here you're just
>>> talking about a single relationship: identity.
>>
>> Yes. You're exactly right. I'm afraid I haven't been that
>> clear. When
>> I say "related hCards" I mean related in that they represent
>> the same
>> person or organization. I've been using "related hCards" as
>> shorthand
>> for "hCards that represent the same person or organization", which I
>> now realize must be confusing. (but it seemed so clear in my  
>> head! :D)
>
> Ryan,
>
> That made me laugh out loud.  I was definitely responding to uid 
> +url as non-identity relations earlier and it seemed perfectly clear
> in my head as well. =)
>
> So, don't equal UIDs already imply identitical hCards?

No. Per the RFC, UID identifies the entity represented by the vCard  
or hCard [1].

> In other words, what I think we've really been discussing is how to  
> discover hCards for identical entities, using either URL or
> SOURCE (or "via", although I think SOURCE is much better).

Exactly.

> Frankly, it seems like it would work if it SHOULD be expected that  
> consume apps MAY use URL and/or SOURCE to look for identical
> hCards.
>
> I believe this approach allows both uid+url and uid+source to link  
> to "related" and/or "sourcing" hCards without any of further
> restrictions on the UID.

I don't see any reason why source can't be used as well as url+uid.  
They signify different semantics, but are both already a part of the  
format.

They only thing we need to figure out with SOURCE is what consuming  
applications that convert to vCard (like X2V) should do. Should they  
take the SOURCE value from the hCard or should they use the URL of  
the hCard (as X2V currently does).

-ryan


1. From section 3.6.7 of RFC 2426 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2426.txt):

    Type purpose: To specify a value that represents a globally unique
       identifier corresponding to the individual or resource associated
       with the vCard.
    ...
    Type special notes: The type is used to uniquely identify the object
      that the vCard represents.

--
Ryan King
ryan at technorati.com