hcard-issues-closed

<entry-title>hCard closed issues</entry-title>

closed issues

hCard closed issues that have no further actions to take..

closed 2005

Closed issues that were raised in 2005.

• 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: ACCEPTED FAQ. 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="[MiddleName]" class="additional-name">M</abbr>. Honorific Suffixes in the RFC include Jr., Esq. and other inherited suffixes, so I would just use <abbr class="honorific-suffix" title="Junior">Jr.</abbr> etc. See hCard FAQ: marking up suffixes for more details.
  2. 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: ACCEPTED FAQ. If you want to add a type to certain elements, including address and telephone it may be done in the following manner:

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

See hCard FAQ: multiple addresses for detailed examples.

<span class="tel">
 <span class="type">work</span>
 <span class="value">123.555.1212</span>
<span>

See hCard authoring: phone numbers for more detailed examples.

Note: 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

• 2005-07-22 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: ACCEPTED. This should at least 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> (recommended)
       2. Set "org" as usual, and set "fn" explicitly to empty. E.g. <span class="fn"></span><span class="org">W3C</span> or
          • Simply have no "fn", and on the parsing side, if there is no "fn" present, but there is an "org" property, then duplicate the "org" value as "fn"
     • The last two options are effectively the same and are both not explicit and easily confusable with a "missing data" condition. Thus option 1 is preferred. 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
     • We are looking for descriptions of how other vCard supporting applications treat "company" vCards differently from "person" vCards. Please provide descriptions here:
       • Address Book / MacOSX.3:
         • Export (e.g. drag & drop to desktop, view in text editor)
           • Sets "FN" and "ORG" to the name of the company
           • Sets proprietary X-ABShowAs:COMPANY
         • Import (e.g. edit in text editor, drag & drop from desktop)
           • By setting "FN" and "ORG' to the same name (e.g. Banana Computers Inc.)
           • And removing any proprietary properties (e.g. X-ABShowAs)
           • Address Book user interface showed new vCard as a "company" contact rather an a person
       • Address Book MacOSX.4:
         • same results as above -RyanKing
       • The Danger Hiptop (aka T-Mobile Sidekick) address book:
         • Export (e.g. email to a mailing list)
           • Sets "FN" to the empty string and puts the company name in "ORG".
         • Import - could not find a way to import a .vcf, by email, IM, or other means into the Sidekick.
       • Contacts / Outlook 2003 Windows
         • Export (e.g. Highlight contact, File, Save As, vcard)
           • Sets "N" and "ORG to the name of the company
           • Sets "FN" to value in "File as:"
       • Add another vCard app here.
     • RESOLVED. hCard now specifically describes organization contact info, and there is also now an FAQ regarding this: hCard FAQ: How do you mark up an organization.

• 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."
     • A: ACCEPTED FAQ. 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. FAQ added: FAQ: Are class names case sensitive.
  2. ...but I find example data with class="Given-Name"
     • A: ACCEPTED RESOLVED. That is from an older preliminary 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. FAQ also added: hCard FAQ: Can hCards use variants of properties like Given Name
       • A: By Brian Suda I have fixed all the references in the hcard-brainstorming page to reflect the lower-case style, this is a hold-over from the original design, X2V has been updated.
  3. ..and code that supports it [data with class="Given-Name"].
     • A: ACCEPTED RESOLVED. 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.
       • rfc2629xslt.html uses Street-Address, Family-Name, etc.
         • A: By Julian Reschke Fixed rfc2629.xslt (2005-10-29)
       • X2V Version 0.5.1 2005-07-08 supports Family-Name etc.
         • A: By Brian Suda I agree that the upper-case class names can be removed from the code, this was a hold-over and will be trimmed.
  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.
     • A. ACCEPTED RESOLVED. This needs to be added to the spec. 2005-11-08 Update: the way multiple values has been updated to work much better and not require ul/ol.
  5. the hcard-profile says country-name but X2V and lots of the data I've seen says country
     • A. ACCEPTED RESOLVED. 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. FAQ also added: hCard FAQ: Can hCards use variants of properties like Given Name
       • A: By Brian Suda I have fixed all the references in the hcard-brainstorming page to reflect the proper country-name, X2V will support this in the next iteration when i fix several bugs at once.

• 2005-08-12 raised by Jack L. Wolfgang II. Use of mailto transport functionality for the E-Mail address field.
  1. As stated in the hcard-brainstorming document, mailto is abused by spammers. As a result, many organizations have moved to form-based contacts as opposed to mailtos. According to RFC 2426, Section 3.3.2, "A non-standard value can also be specified." Does this refer to a non-standard e-mail address value or type value?
     • A: ACCEPTED FAQ. Type value. Note that non-standard property values and properties are allowed in vCard, but that mechanism is not adopted by hCard. See hCard FAQ: what types of email can you specify.

• 2005-10-30 raised by Julian Reschke.
  1. Several implementations (Which ones? Please provide links.) seem to assume that any class attribute that contains the substring "vcard" indeed signals the presence of vcard information. Not so: there are examples (What examples? Please provide links.) of where a token in the class attribute indeed only starts with "vcard", in which it should be ignored. Implementations using XPath (such as XSLT or Greasemonkey scripts) should be advised to do a contains(concat(@class,' '),'vcard ').
     • REJECTED VAGUE. Which implementations? And which examples?
     • (Note: the code contains(concat(@class,' '),'vcard ') above is broken see parsing-microformats#Parsing_class_values for a correct example --Robert Bachmann)
     • CLOSING DUE TO INSUFFICIENT INFORMATION. No specific implementation examples have been provided that show any problems with substring matches of "vcard". Tantek 07:00, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

• 2005-12-08 raised by Kenny Heaton.
  1. The specification gives no way to to declare a telephone extension, as in (800) 234-5678 ext. 101
     • ACCEPTED FAQ. What is the best way to declare a telephone extension in a "tel" property? (also seems like it would be a vCard FAQ). See hCard FAQ: How do you mark up a phone extension.

closed 2006

Closed issues that were raised in 2006.

• 2006-01-21 raised by Ben Boyle.
  1. Have run into issues trying to use definition lists with hCard, specifically around nesting requirements for tel where the DT element takes a class "type" (e.g. Telephone, Facsimile) and the DD element marks the value. It is invalid to place any other elements within a DL that wrap around the DT/DD pairs so there is no available element to assign the class "tel" to. XHTML2 proposes a DI element that will resolve this issue. I am hoping for an interim solution for those that wish to use definition lists, perhaps that "any class that would be placed on the DI parent (in XHTML2) must instead be placed on the first DT element". I realise this will cause headaches for those implementing hCard parsers. I'd also like to note this may affect other (current or future) microformats and relates to the general hassle of definition lists in current (X)HTML recommendations. For your consideration - thanks!
     • ACCEPTED PARTIAL FAQ. An example has been added for how to use a semantic DL to markup a microformat such as hCard to the faq:Why do the examples use span and div.
     • REJECTED LACK OF REAL WORLD EXAMPLES. No URLs have been provided that publish the specific "Telephone"/"Facsimile" in DT mark up pattern mentioned in the issue.
     • REJECTED WORKAROUND AVAILABLE.
       1. Consider using the value-class-pattern inside the <dd class="tel">, e.g. <span class="type"><span class="value-title" title="fax"> </span></span>
       2. Don't use definition lists in this manner. The description of a definition should go completely in the DD element, and thus you should be able to put the class on that.
       3. Use separate DLs in the cases where you would otherwise have needed a DI element.
     • REJECTED XHTML2 ABANDONED. The W3C is abandoning XHTML2 as of 2009-12, thus there is no need to plan for a DI element.

• 2006-01-23 raised by David Janes (?).
  1. Issue 1: Specifying Authoritative or Canonical or Official hCard
     • Use of rel="me"?
       • Only specifies an alternate version, not necessarily the canonical version
       • rel="me" must be symmetrical, per the XFN spec. What exactly does this mean for this use?
       • "me" (and, depending on usage, "self") are not appropriate for content referring to third- parties. Andy Mabbett
       • +1 REJECTED bad overloading of rel-me to attempt to make it explicity imply some logic for authoritative/canonical/official. Tantek 00:28, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
     • Suggestion: use rel="me self". Adopt "self" semantics from Atom which means "the", or controversially "alternate, equivalent" version
       • The combined use of rel="me" and rel="self" may conflict with their definitions in the XFN Profile and RFC 4287 respectively. See the mailing list discussion on rel="me self" for more information. From Ryan Cannon.
       • +1 REJECTED rel="me self" per conflict pointed out by Ryan Cannon. Tantek 00:28, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
     • Suggestion: use rel="via". Per RFC 4287, via "signifies that the IRI in the value of the href attribute identifies a resource that is the source of the information provided in the containing element." from Ryan Cannon.
       • REJECTED different problem. The notion of where the data came from (i.e. "via") is different from content asserting that it is authoritative/canonical/official. Tantek 00:28, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
     • Other suggestions? "authoritative", "canonical"?
       • REJECTED inadequate description of what those terms would mean (thus they would inevitably be incompatibly used). Tantek 00:28, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
     • How does this relate to authentication/trust issues? Is this a different problem with a different scope?
       • (microformats-discuss list) Joe Andrieu: The concept behind an "authoritative" hCard rather than "definitive" or "canonical" one was that "authoritative" would explicitly be a claim by the author of the hCard regarding its authority in describing the subject of the hCard, i.e., use this hCard as the one true source of this individual's contact information.
       • REJECTED different problem. To summarize: authentication/trust is a separate topic. See OAuth for starters. Tantek 00:28, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
     • What exactly is the scope of the problem to solve here?
       • (IRC) (10:47:44) sreynen: for example, all of the examples I've seen involve a single person publishing multiple hCards of himself
       • (IRC) (10:48:13) sreynen: yet many people are talking about 3rd parties publishing hCards and pointing back to the subject's own hCard
       • +1 REJECTED insufficient (as in, none provided) real world examples of the issue. Tantek 00:28, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
     • ACCEPTED PARTIAL. MULTIPLE ISSUES AND BRAINSTORMING. The questions of authoritative, and canonical, and representative are likely different questions and must be deconstructed into separate issues. - Tantek 00:28, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
       • See representative-hcard for the resolution of the the representative hCard question.
       • "authoritative" hCard needs a better definition of the specific question, and documented real world examples where it would be useful. Closing due to lack of provided real world examples.
       • "canonical" hCard needs a better definition of the specific question, and documented real world examples where it would be useful. Closing due to lack of provided real world examples.
       • Use "url uid" when linking to a canonical version of the hCard for a specific site - as now documented in hCard Authoring: canonical hCard within a site.

• 2006-01-28 raised by Tantek on #microformats
  1. Is hCard is really appropriate for a named phone bridge, or do we need something else for a named phone numbers that are neither people nor organizations. For example see the "Zakim" hCard on http://www.w3.org/2005/12/allgroupoverview.html
     • ACCEPTED BRAINSTORMING. Though hCard has been expanded to allow named locations, those are *physical* locations, and hCard is not really appropriate for named virtual locations (aka virtual addresses) such as a phone number or URL. However, given the use case of having a contact in one's address book for "Zakim" in order to "dial Zakim" as may be recommended in a working group IRC discussion, perhaps Zakim is a virtual entity like an organization. Update (2009-312): I've captured this scenario in hCard brainstorming: named phone numbers. The 2005 W3C All Group overview no longer mentions Zakim so this is a past or theoretical example at this point. In addition this question has not come up again, and thus the resolution has been changed from FAQ to BRAINSTORMING, and as captured as such, this issue is closed. Tantek 05:05, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

• 2006-02-03 raised by Brian
  1. We can use the geo microformat in hatom to represent GeoRSS element
     • ACCEPTED DOCUMENTATION. Yes, this should be documented in hatom-examples, and has been moved to hatom-brainstorming as a suggestion to be explored and written up there accordingly. -Tantek

• 2006-02-13 raised by Eron Wright
  1. Few systems contemplate the altitude component of a coordinate, yet it exists. Altitude becomes important when working with 3D mapping software such as Google Earth. Indeed, the geocoding service that Google Earth uses returns a three-dimensional coordinate. I suggest that hCard provide explicit support for altitude.
     • REJECTED POSTPONED. Not in vCard. There is no "altitude" component in vCard (RFC 2426), and thus (certainly for now) there won't be any in hCard. If a new version of vCard were to come out with altitude, then we would add it to hCard. At some point we may also consider adding explicit extensions beyond vCard, but if we were to do so, we would capture them first on the hcard-brainstorming page. See vCard suggestions: elevation, and geo-extension-elevation.

• 2006-02-19 raised by Miika Mäkinen.
  1. Couldn't the types for tel numbers be specified in a class? Now, for a phone number one needs to add the type as "visible" text, which is not always preferred. For example, type "Work", many times more suitable label could be "Office" or similar and sometimes you might not want to display any type information at all.
     • REJECTED TRIED ALREADY. Using class names for the "type" of a tel or adr was attempted, and failed in many situations. In addition, the "type" information is actual data, not just a property name, and thus deserves to be in the visible markup. Note that you can use abbreviations, e.g. <abbr class="type" title="work">W:</abbr> in order to present the type in a way that may better fit in with the rest of your presentation. Update (2009-312) see also the value-class-pattern for how to provide tel 'type' information with other labels. - Tantek 05:11, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

• 2006-02-23 raised by Jesse Skinner and Ben Buchanan.
  1. Are multiple URLs allowed? The Property List suggests not, whereas email and tel have multiple type/value pairs. However, the parsing page suggests multiple URLs are OK. Either way, it seems clear that a type cannot be associated with a URL. So how exactly does hCard deal with multiple URLs?
     • RESOLVED FAQ: Multiple URLs are allowed. Some consuming agents (Apple's AddressBook.app among them) don't have an interface for producing multiple URLs, but they are still valid in vCard and therefore hCard. --RyanKing 17:58, 12 Jun 2006 (PDT)
     • FAQ documented: hCard FAQ: can an hCard have multiple URLs

• 2006-03-07 raised by Tantek.
  1. Issue 1: In 99% of the cases I am finding the need to explicitly do "n" markup, the person has a three word fn which is in the form "given-name additional-name(or initial) family-name". Should we make three word fn's into another shorthand notation to make this easier for authors?
     • REJECTED. I have seen sufficient additional cases in systems that have full names but not structured names that have multi-word family names that I think such an algorithm may cause minor data corruption where part of a family-name is interpreted as an additional-name. -Tantek. Update (2009-312). keywords: n shorthand, three word fn shorthand. some examples:
       • Thomas Vander Wal
       • Amy van der Hiel

• 2006-04-06 raised by Evan.
  1. What is the relationship between the CATEGORY property and rel-tag? Can you add a tag to an hCard? How can you add a tag to a particular hcard on a page without tagging the other cards on a page?
     • ACCEPTED. Categories can optionally be represented as tags. The classname 'category' should always be used, but rel="tag" can optionally be used (in addition to the category classname). In the case that a rel-tag tag is used, the tag (as defined by rel-tag) is used for the category. Examples: (1) <span class="category">food</span> and (2) <a class="category" rel="tag" href="http://example.com/food">Food!</a>. --RyanKing 15:16, 13 Jun 2006 (PDT)
     • FAQ: hCard FAQ: How are category and rel-tag related

• 2006-04-10 raised by Scott Reynen.
  1. When someone looks at the hCard pages, one sees no collection of real-world publishing of contact data nor discussion of the properties implied by such examples, I think it's far too easy to infer that microformats come from other formats more than actual behavior. There's nothing on the process nor the hCard pages explaining this discrepancy. I would argue that there should be an explanation, probably in both places.
     • ACCEPTED. Agreed. Part of this is now documented in hcard-design-methodology, but to do: document additional specifics in the process and process-faq accordingly. - Tantek. 2009-313 Update by Tantek 03:21, 10 November 2009 (UTC) - wrote up additional specifics in:
       • process: Document Current Behavior
       • process FAQ: on hCard on hCalendar

• 2006-10-21 raised by Andy Mabbett
  1. There should be some way to say that the URL of an hCard or hCalendar event is the URL of the page itself, without having to include a redundant, and accessibility-damaging link to that page, on the page itself.
     • Quite often I see "a" webpage accessible with several different URLs. Typically 1 URL is the "preferred" URL, expected to have a long lifetime. Sometimes other URLs are "convenience" URLs that may have been linked to in the past, but are expected to go away soon, which resolve to the same file (the "latest version"). Then there are "archive" URLs that show an exact copy of that webpage as it appeared some time in the past. I think we want to always use the "preferred" URL, no matter which of those URLs we happen to stumble upon first -- so the URL is not actually redundant. (How exactly is it "accessibility-damaging" for a page to link to itself? Could you explain or add a link to an explanation?) --DavidCary 17:44, 5 Apr 2007 (PDT)
       • "How exactly is it "accessibility-damaging" for a page to link to itself?" - Novice user clicks on link; nothing (it appears) happens. Repeat ad infinitum, until user leaves site to do something else. Andy Mabbett 02:43, 6 Apr 2007 (PDT)
         • That scenario demonstrates more of a usability issue than an accessibility issue. Also, given that numerous (nearly all?) social network sites (e.g. sites with hcard-supporting-user-profiles) provide profile pages that link to themselves, this issue (and the above hypothesized user behavior) may be a theoretical misconception, and require data/studies to back it up, since modern accepted practice contradicts this hypothetical issue as currently described.
     • A: REJECTED THEORETICAL AND MISCONCEPTION. As noted, given that numerous (nearly all?) social network sites (e.g. sites with hcard-supporting-user-profiles) provide profile pages that link to themselves, the usability aspect of this issue may be a theoretical misconception, and require data/studies to back it up and thus for now is rejected. As far as any accessibility issue - if this were truly an accessibility issue, then accessibility tools such as screen readers would unlink/delink or otherwise not make clickable any links from a page to itself, thus solving any such supposed problem at the tool level. If accessibility tools are NOT doing so, that is, leaving pages links to themselves active, then they have likely decided that such links are not an accessibility problem.
     • A: 2009-313 UPDATE: ACCEPT AUTHORING GUIDELINE. There are three cases to this issue which would help as an hcard-authoring example to illustrate this issue and provide authoring guidance. Described below, and now added to hCard authoring: URL of an hCard being the page itself. Obviously similar techniques can be used for events, reviews etc.
       • First, as stated above, numerous social network sites' profile pages link to themselves, usually on thumbnail icons, for whatever design reasons they have - whether or not this behavior is (un)desirable is irrelevant to the practicality of marking them up - if a site chooses to do so, it can markup such links with class="url" or perhaps class="url uid".
       • Second, as of 2009 many (most?) profile pages have some form of live or updating content, and thus it makes functional sense to include a link to the page itself labeled something like "reload" or "refresh". When the user clicks the link, it's not that "nothing happens" as claimed above, but rather, the user is shown new content. If the site provides updates dynamically (e.g. via XHR), then when doing so they can also use javascript+CSS that hides any such manual reload/refresh link.
       • Third, for profile pages which neither link to themselves as part of their design, nor have any live/updating content, the author can include an empty hyperlink with an empty href attribute (which is resolved as a relative URL to the page itself) to provide an invisible hyperlink to the page itself which is thus both not typically clickable (since it takes up no space), nor has any content which could be erroneously read by a screen reader. E.g. <a class="url" href=""></a>. This authoring suggestion is probably good enough to handle this third, now perhaps rarest case, though it would be useful to to have some test cases that can be run in various browsers / assistive technologies to see what they do. Another (lengthier) suggestion would be to use value-class-pattern value-title technique, e.g.: <span class="url"><span class="value-title" title="http://example.com/user/john"> </span></span>.

closed 2007

Closed issues that were raised in 2007.

• 2007-01-26 raised by JamesCraig.
  1. Proposal to use the class attribute for qname prefixed type values (and others such as dtstart values), AKA meta classes.

<span xml:lang="en">Home (preferred): <span class="tel type:home type:pref">+1.415.555.1212</span></span>
<span xml:lang="es">Casa (preferido): <span class="tel type:home type:pref">+1.415.555.1212</span></span>

• 1. • REJECTED DUPLICATE ETC. Class attributes for type values was tried and rejected and in addition, qnames-considered-harmful.
     • Clarified proposal, leaving REJECTED.

• 2007-05-08 raised by Tantek as a result of a message from Andy Mabbett on microformats-new
  1. How do you distinguish a place vs. an organization hCard, both from the perspective of a publisher (author) wishing to express the particular semantic, and from the perspective of a parser (developer) wishing to discern the difference? This is different from the 2006-12-15 issue on semantic specificity because this issue is *specifically* about place vs. org, rather than conflating that with person.
  2. Note: mailing list post cited in 2006-12-15 issue is quite clear; it says "when a spider finds an hCard, it can't tell if it is a person, company, organization, or place.".
     • DUPLICATE. See 2006-12-15 issue.

closed 2008

Closed issues that were raised in 2008.

• 2008-02-07 raised by Andy Mabbett in microformats-discuss/2008-February/011552.html
  1. "nickname" and "fn" optimization does not work for some or all names in Asian languages. See Tom Cruise on Chinese Wikipedia, where the fn and nickname are the same. This could be partly remedied by not applying such optimization when the page's (or element's) language is set to one of a set of affected languages (may also apply to other languages, such as Greek). Comment from people fluent in such languages would be welcome.
     • REJECTED DUPLICATE. This is a duplicate of issue raised 2007-03-28 by James Craig.

closed 2009

Closed issues that were raised in 2009.

• ...

see also

• hcard-issues
• hcard-issues-resolved