[uf-discuss] Proposal: Mandatory connection of a XFN to a"source" hCard and a "target" hCard

[Costello, Roger L.]

Thanks Scott.  Excellent comments.

> 1. All people in an XFNetwork MUST be identified via   
> hCard somewhere within the network.

How about allowing the parties involved in an XFN-relationship be
identified by either hCard or a FOAF document or an OpenID? (I must
confess ignorance of OpenID.  Is the id specified in its own document,
like FOAF, or is it embedded within HTML?)

CHALLENGE

[Scenario] You are a robot.  Your mission is to create a social graph
using every XFN you can find. You've just arrived at a web page with
this URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/13886259@N03/.  As you parse the
page you encounter a link containing XFN: <a
href="/photos/24172116 at N08/" rel="contact">  How do you determine the
identity of the source and target of this relationship?

What would you add to the link to enable the robot to identify the
source and target?

Let me toss out an idea:

<a href="/photos/24172116 at N08/" rel="contact" name="#source"
target="http://www.example.org/target/foaf.rdf"> 

Read as: "The identity of the source may be found within this document
on the element with id="source".  The identity of the target may be
found in the FOAF document at the URL:
http://www.example.org/target/foaf.rdf

How about that?

/Roger