hcard-issues

hCard issues

These are externally raised issues about hCard with broadly varying degrees of merit. Thus some issues are REJECTED for a number of obvious reasons (but still documented here in case they are re-raised), and others contain longer discussions. Some issues may be ACCEPTED and perhaps cause changes or improved explanations in the spec. Submitted issues may (and probably will) be edited and rewritten for better terseness, clarity, calmness, rationality, and as neutral a point of view as possible. Write your issues well. — Tantek

See related hcalendar-issues.

Issues

• 2005-06-30 raised by Jack L. Wolfgang II

Please feel free to move these to the FAQs if they are better suited there.

• 1. Handling middle names and suffixes: How does one handle middle initials/names in the hCard format and suffixes that are not honorific suffixes (e.g. Jr., Sr., II, III, etc. as opposed to Ph.D., Esq., M.D., etc.)?

A: By Brian Suda hCard is based of the RFC2426 spec. I you want to use a middle initial it can be expanded using the abbr element. <abbr title="Middle Name" class="additional-names">M</abbr>. Honorific Suffixes in the RFC include Jr. Esq. and other inherited suffixes, so i would just use <abbr title="Junior" class="honorific-suffixes">Jr.</abbr>

• 1. Handling different types of addresses: How does one handle the TYPE (e.g. postal, work, etc.) specification for addresses as specified in RFC 2426 Section 3.2.1?

A: By Brian Suda If you want to add a type to certain elements, including address and telephone it will be done in the following manner:

<span class="adr"> <span class="work"> ... </span> </span>

<span class="tel"><span class="work">123.456.7890</span></span>

the TYPE needs to be a sub-element of the property (adr, tel, etc) NOTE: EMAIL does NOT have many TYPE attributes, only INTERNET and X400

• 2005-06-21 raised by Hixie
  1. Issue H-1: This specification is lacking a user agent conformance section. There's basically nothing that says how hCards must be parsed, how to handle errors, and so forth. Is it defined in terms of the DOM? Is it defined in terms of a serialisation? How do you handle unexpected content or missing content?

• 2005-07-22 raised by DanConnolly
  1. in my cellphone/sidekick address book, I have a number of entries for companies. I wrote asHCard.xsl to convert the data from RDF to hCard, but I don't know what to do with entries for companies, since FN is mandatory in hCard.
     • A: This should be an FAQ. "How do I write an hCard for a company?" The vCard specification is silent on this point (entries for companies). Thus there are two options as far as the hCard standard is concerned:
       1. Set "fn" and "org" to the same value. E.g. <span class="fn org">W3C</span>
       2. Set "org" as usual, and set "fn" explicitly to empty. E.g. <span class="fn"></span><span class="org">W3C</span>
     • For converting applications (hCard to vCard), they may consider using proprietary extensions to make the distinction explicit in generated vCards, based on either case 1 or 2 above. E.g. Apple's Address Book application supports the property: X-ABShowAs:COMPANY

• 2005-07-23 raised by DanConnolly
  1. are class names case sensitive or not? hcard says "If names in the source schema are case-insensitive, then use an all lowercase equivalent."
     • Class names are case sensitive per the HTML4 specification. Hence hCard explicitly specifies the case of class name to use for source schema names that are case-insensitive.
  2. ...but I find example data with class="Given-Name"
     • That is from an older version of the hCard spec which used mixed case class names. Such class names are no longer valid hCard. Please note which examples (URLs) are using the older class names and hopefully we can get them fixed.
  3. ..and code that supports it [data with class="Given-Name"].
     • Any code supporting the older class name(s) is for backward compatibility only, and should be phased out. Any new hCard code SHOULD NOT support such mixed case class names.
  4. The ul/ol stuff for multiple values of a property seems to be in the X2V code and in hcard-brainstorming but not in the hcard spec.
     • ACCEPTED. This needs to be added to the spec.
  5. the hcard-profile says country-name but X2V and lots of the data I've seen says country
     • RFC 2426 clearly says "country name" in both the prose and the grammar, thus "country-name" is the correct class name to use. If X2V uses just "country", it needs to be fixed to use "country-name", and any such examples as well. Please note which examples (URLs) are using the class name "country" and hopefully we can get them fixed.

Template

Please use this format:

• YYYY-MM-DD raised by AUTHORNAME
  1. Issue 1: Here is the first issue I have.
  2. Issue 2: Here is the second issue I have.