[uf-discuss] An Inconvenient hCard

Ara Pehlivanian ara.pehlivanian at gmail.com
Sun Mar 11 17:06:34 PST 2007


I've got a bit of a problem with an hCard that I need to mark up and I
was wondering if anyone could lend me a hand.

I realize the syntax requires that a type be specified for telephone
numbers ("voice", "fax", etc...) and that's where my problem lies.
It's inconvenient to have the word "voice" appear in the markup
because that's not how the convention (at least in this neck of the
woods) is when writing out contact information. The final display
should be:

Tel.: (514) 123-4567
Fax: (514) 123-4568

Yet with the required "voice"/"fax" types it ends up like this:

Voice Tel.: (514) 123-4567
Fax Fax: (514) 123-4568

or in the French version of the page:

Voice Tél.: (514) 123-4567
Fax Téléc.: (514) 123-4568

I realize that it's simple enough to just hide the types via CSS, but
being the strict standards advocate that I am, I don't like entangling
the structural layer with the presentational one by making it
dependent on it. The idea of superfluous words littering my markup
without proper grammatical consideration doesn't sit well with me.

I thought of doing something like this:

Tel.: (514) 123-4567 (Voice)
Fax: (514) 123-4567 (Fax)

or in the French:

Tél.: (514) 123-4567 (Voice)
Téléc.: (514) 123-4568 (Fax)

But it's redundant in English and nonsensical in French.

So, dear Microformats community, please lend me a hand and help me
unravel this conundrum of mine.

Cheers,
A.

-- 
Ara Pehlivanian

Site: http://arapehlivanian.com/
Email & GTalk: ara.pehlivanian at gmail.com
MSN: ara_p at hotmail.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ara_p/



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