[uf-discuss] hCard to represent simple entities (was: Tentative proposal...)

[Andy Mabbett]

In message <477D3A36.7030300 at brixlogic.com>, Guillaume Lebleu
<gl at brixlogic.com> writes

>Andy Mabbett wrote:
>> Because they're the most appropriate semantics;
>I don't agree with that, but I'm not going to argue about it.
>> and because people are already using the long-hand version of hCard
>>to  do so.
>>
>> vCard is an electronic business cards standard; hCard is not merely
>>an  electronic business cards standard, but already has wider uses.

>Ok, I didn't know that.

The hCard spec says that:

        hCard is a simple, open, distributed format for representing
        people, companies, organizations, and places, using a 1:1
        representation of vCard (RFC2426) properties and values

note that's NOT:

        hCard is a 1:1 representation of [a] vCard...

For clarity, the former can be distilled to:

        hCard is for representing people, companies, organizations, and
        places

>In addition, my experience in other communities is that favoring reuse
>over semantic precision can result in very difficult machine processing
>(due to disambiguation requirements)
[...]

I don't think my proposal, or the use outlined above, reduces semantic
precision. Note also that the *only* required property for an hCard is
"fn".

>I just think that the "John Smith" in your example "...as John Smith
>said in..." is different data than in "My contact information:
><br/>John Smith <br/>Cell: (415) ...".
[...]

No. It *is* the same data. That's the crux of the matter.

>In other words, I would be perfectly happy to simply microformat "...as
>John Smith said in..." as "... as <span class="fn n">John Smith</span>
>said in...". I don't see the value of prefixing fn and n by vcard.
>
>I'm probably missing something though, if so, let me know.

That the classes "fn" and/or "n" might already be used, with different
(or no) semantic meaning, to style the page in question?

-- 
Andy Mabbett