[uf-discuss] Re: hCard for non-contact-able locations (Was: Disambiguation Conventions?)

[Scott Reynen]

On Dec 12, 2006, at 1:28 PM, Joe Andrieu wrote:

> For example, since it was initially stabilized hCard has been  
> changed to
> include "place" in its semantics, yet we have no way to let parsers  
> know
> that the "new" hCards may not be people, companies, or organizations,
> but instead may also be places. vCards were for /contactable/  
> entities.

I was just reading the vCalendar (not vCard) spec [1], and was  
reminded of the above when I read this:

> For example, the alternate representation may specify either an  
> LDAP URI pointing to an LDAP server entry or a CID URI pointing to  
> a MIME body part containing a vCard [RFC 2426] for the location.

I'm not familiar with the history of the vCard and vCalendar RFCs,  
but I see that Frank Dawson was an author of both, so it looks like  
he actually did intend vCards to work for non-contact-able locations  
(e.g. the example of "conference room").  That doesn't change  
people's expectations for hCard, but I thought it was interesting  
that this expansion of hCard mirrored vCard without even realizing it.

[1] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txt

Peace,
Scott