[uf-discuss] hCard to represent simple entities

[Guillaume Lebleu]

Andy Mabbett wrote:
>
> 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
>   
I know, but I still think there is a sweet spot for hCard (portable 
friends list, distributed address book with personal electronic cards, 
anything use case that involves exchange of contact info of some sort), 
and still think that microformatting narrative content with hCard where 
there is no contact info and where people, organizations, and places' 
names are only used as references/identifiers is outside of that sweet 
spot. If there is no such sweet spot, then why excluding ships? they do 
have a name, location and contact info.

Another argument is that: if we microformat all people's names with 
hCard, then, if I want to style my actual electronic card from mere 
people's names/references/identifiers mentioned in my blog posts, I will 
have to wrap the hCard used for electronic cards into an element with a 
new classname to communicate precise meaning. So, IMO, I do lose 
semantic meaning by widening the use of hCard beyond its sweet spot.

But I won't argue with the spec. So, case closed AFAIC.
>> That the classes "fn" and/or "n" might already be used, with different
>> (or no) semantic meaning, to style the page in question?
>>
>>     
Sorry if this is not really the point of the discussion, but what I'm 
reading here is that classname "fn" may have different meaning if used 
outside of an element of class "vcard".

Saying this is to me equivalent to saying the "vcard" classname syntax 
is syntactic sugar for the concept of a namespace (as is "vcard-fn"). My 
understanding was that the concept of namespace, not just its xml 
syntax, was an antipattern in microformats. Am I mistaken?

Re: styling, I believe I can use (at least in Firefox):

.hcard .fn { ... }

to specifically style the element of class fn found in an element of 
class hcard, and:

.fn { ... }

to specifically style elements of class fn, which do not appear within 
an element of class hcard.


Guillaume