[uf-discuss] (no subject)

[Toby A Inkster]

Gordon wrote:

> I second Andy Mabbet's concern about allowing multiple instances for
> fields like e.g. country not making sense.

RFC 2426 says, 'Where it makes semantic sense, individual text  
components can include multiple text values (e.g., a "street"  
component with multiple lines) separated by the COMMA character  
(ASCII decimal 44).' It doesn't specify which fields it makes sense  
for, and which it does not — that is left to the judgement of the  
vCard producers and consumers.

Here's an example with multiple countries, which makes sense:

	<div class="adr">
		<span class="extended-address">The Scottish Parliament</span>, <br>
		<span class="locality">Edinburgh</span>, <br>
		<span class="postal-code">EH99 1SP</span>, <br>
		<span class="country-name">Scotland</span>, <br>
		<span class="country-name">United Kingdom</span>
	</div>

Other countries that lie within the United Kingdom include England  
and Wales, and some might argue Northern Ireland and perhaps even  
Cornwall. The concept of countries within countries could also be  
applied to the United Arab Emirates, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, but  
not to say, Australia or the United States where although the member  
states enjoy similar levels of autonomy, few would seriously describe  
them as countries.

> In one of my earlier drafts for this diagram, I had implemented
> givenName and familyName as multiple. I am not sure why I did this and
> cannot find proper reference in the RFC. Can these be multiple?


Similar situation. I can't think of any reason for including multiple  
given-names and family-names in a vCard, but perhaps it might be  
common in some other cultures — I don't know. Still, there's no harm  
in supporting multiple instances. The hCard spec says multiple  
instances are allowed.

> Can geo be multiple?

Not according to the hCard spec. The RFC isn't particularly explicit.  
My parser supports multiple geos within a vCard. But that's just me  
being lazy — easier to pull them all into an array than to choose one  
to keep.

> It is listed with the singular properties, but if geo is meant to  
> reference a place, shouldn't geo be part of the Address it references?

I can't imagine that many parsers would have a problem with geo being  
nested within the address, but in vCard terms its a separate  
property, so once parsed, should be represented separately from the  
address.

 > http://lib.omnia-computing.de/images/JCard.png

You have "n" as being "0..*". Each hCard should have exactly one "n"  
property, Though it may be implied rather than explicit, and it may  
be empty in the case of hCards for organisations.

-- 
Toby A Inkster
<mailto:mail at tobyinkster.co.uk>
<http://tobyinkster.co.uk>