[uf-discuss] Correct way to use the "key" property of hCard

[Philip Tellis]

On 18/09/2007, Scott Reynen <scott at randomchaos.com> wrote:

> value formatting is already established [1].  I don't think you can
> merely reference a URL which contains the key; as I read the spec,
> you'd need to include the key itself in the vCard, so you'll need to
> do the same in the hCard.  This may be a good place to use <abbr>,

So there are two reasons I don't like putting the whole key into the hCard.

The first is because of the page weight.  It doesn't make sense to
have such a large chunk of text stored in a document but never
displayed to the user.

No user would ever read and make sense of the full text of a public
key, because that information is specifically targetted at machines.
The key ID is a human readable view of a PGP key, so it makes sense to
only make that available for humans to read.

Secondly, is the problem of revoking keys.  If, for any reason, one
needs to revoke a key and create a new one, having the full text of
your key all over the place becomes a management nightmare.  You'd
have to go and update all locations.  Providing a link, however, means
that anyone clicking on the link can see at once that the key has been
revoked, and the same page could possibly be updated to redirect
readers to a new key.

Yes, you'd still have the headache of updating the key ID in all pages
that reference it, but you don't have the problem of pages holding the
full text of a revoked key.

What do others think?  Is this possibly a case where hCard needs to
deviate slightly from the vCard specification while still staying
reasonably close to the spec?

Philip