[uf-discuss] hatom tumblr theme

[Martin McEvoy]

Hello Toby, James

Toby A Inkster wrote:
> James Tindall:
>
>> Incidentally however, this vcard validator now complains that uid should
>> not appear twice on a page with the same value?
>> http://hcard.geekhood.net/?url=microformats.tumblr.com
>
> There is no prohibition on reusing UIDs in the hCard spec, but 
> hcard.geekhood.net goes far beyond the spec with regards to suggesting 
> best practices and things you might have missed. In general, I think 
> it's a good tool, but in this case I (personally) disagree with it.
>
> If Joe has an hCard for himself on his index.html and another hCard 
> for himself on his contact-me.html, then nobody would think twice 
> about giving them both the same UID. So if two hCards on different 
> pages can have the same UID, then why not two hCards on the same page? 
> What is important (and again this is just my opinion) is that if two 
> hCards do have the same UID (whether they're on different pages or the 
> same page), then they should be referring to the same contact (person, 
> organisation, place, whatever).
>
> To back up my argument, I'll cite the vCard spec (RFC 2426) which 
> defines the purpose of "UID" as:
>
>> To specify a value that represents a globally unique
>> identifier corresponding to the individual or resource
>> associated with the vCard.
>
>
> That is, the UID is a unique identifier for the contact, not a unique 
> identifier for the card.
Nope you will find that the UID is for the entire vcard....
>
> I've contacted Kornel about this warning message and suggested that he 
> change it so that the warning is only issued if two hCards have the 
> same UID but different FNs.

I would say that is wrong too, what is wrong with that is how authors 
commonly mark up the UID of a hCard in microformats eg:

<a class="url uid" href="http://myfoosite.com/">myfoosite</a>

where this all falls apart is that if there is more than one regular 
author of a site they might all want to use the same url, Its easily 
solvable by adding @id to a hCard and using a relative url

<a class="url uid" href="http://myfoosite.com/#person1">myfoosite</a>

<a class="url uid" href="http://myfoosite.com/#person2">myfoosite</a>

All that aside UID should *only* really be used once on a page to define 
a single authoritative point of contact, using more than one UID really 
seems to defeat the object when you think about it..
>
> As an aside, I'll point out that I do *not* recommend using the same 
> UID for the historic hCards in a resume, because in that situation, 
> merging details is not the desired behaviour - you want them to be 
> kept separate.
>

Best Wishes.

-- 
Martin McEvoy

http://weborganics.co.uk/

"You may find it hard to swallow the notion that anything as large and apparently inanimate as the Earth is alive."
Dr. James Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia