hcard

2005-07-09T20:16:24Z

CoriSchlegel: /* Examples in the wild */

= hCard =

hCard is a simple, open, distributed contact information format for people, companies, and organizations, which is suitable for embedding in (X)HTML, Atom, RSS, and arbitrary XML. hCard is a 1:1 representation of the vCard standard ([http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2426.txt RFC2426]) in XHTML, one of several open [[microformats|microformat]] standards.
__TOC__

== Draft Specification ==

=== Editor ===
[http://tantek.com/ Tantek Çelik], [http://technorati.com Technorati, Inc.]

=== Authors ===
* [http://tantek.com/ Tantek Çelik], [http://technorati.com Technorati, Inc]
* [http://suda.co.uk/ Brian Suda]

=== Copyright ===
{{MicroFormatCopyrightStatement2004}}

=== Patents ===
{{MicroFormatPatentStatement}}

=== Inspiration and Acknowledgments ===
Thanks to: my good friend [http://vadim.com/ Vadim] who introduced me to vCard ''many'' years ago, and if I'd only paid more attention then, perhaps I could have helped a lot of people avoid wasting a lot of time reinventing various standards wheels.

== Introduction ==
The vCard standard ([http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2426.txt RFC2426]), has been broadly interoperably implemented (e.g. Apple's "Address Book" application built into MacOSX).

In addition, many bloggers identify themselves by name and discuss their friends and family. With just a tad bit of structure, bloggers can discuss people in their blog(s) in such a way that spiders and other aggregators can retrieve this information, automatically convert them to vCards, and use them in any vCard application or service.

This specification introduces the '''hCard''' format, which is a 1:1 representation of the aforementioned vCard standard, in semantic XHTML. Bloggers can both embed vCards directly in their web pages, and style them with CSS to make them appear as desired. In addition, hCard enables applications to retrieve information about such vCards directly from web pages without having to reference a separate file.

== Semantic XHTML Design Principles ==
{{SemanticXHTMLDesignPrinciples}}

== Format ==
=== In General ===
The vCard standard ([http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2426.txt RFC2426]) forms the basis of hCard.

The basic format of hCard is to use vCard object/property names in lower-case for class names, and to map the nesting of vCard objects directly into nested XHTML elements.

=== More Semantic Equivalents ===
However, for some properties there is a more semantic equivalent, and therefore they get special treatment, e.g.:
* <code>URL</code> in vCard becomes <code><a class="url" href="...">...</a></code> inside the element with <code>class="vcard"</code> in hCard.
* Similarly, <code>EMAIL</code> in vCard becomes <code><nowiki><a class="email" href="mailto:...">...</a></nowiki></code>
* <code>PHOTO</code> in vCard becomes <code><img class="photo" src="..." alt="Photo of ..." /></code>

=== Singular vs. Plural Properties ===

For properties which are singular (e.g. "N" and "FN"), the first descendant element with that class should take effect, any others being ignored.

For properties which can be plural (e.g. "TEL"), each class instance should create a instance of that property. Plural properties with subtypes (e.g. TEL with WORK, HOME, CELL) can be optimized to share a common element for the property itself, with each instance of subtype being an appropriately classed descendant of the property element.

=== Human vs. Machine readable ===

If an <code><abbr></code> element is used for a property, then the '<code>title</code>' attribute of the <code><abbr></code> element is the value of the property, instead of the contents of the element, which instead provide a human presentable version of the value.

Similarly, if an <code><img></code> element is used for one or more properties, it must be treated as follows:
# For the "PHOTO" property and any other property that takes a URL as its value, the <code>src="..."</code> attribute provides the property value.
# For other properties, the <code><img></code> element's '<code>alt</code>' attribute is the value of the property.

=== Property Exceptions ===

vCard has several properties which either do not make sense on, or are already implied within the context of a web page. This section explains what to (not) do with them.

# '''NAME''', '''PROFILE''', '''SOURCE''', '''PRODID''' properties as defined in Sections 2.1.2, 2.1.3, 2.1.4, 3.6.3 of RFC 2426. Content publishers MUST NOT use these properties in their hCards, and as such, hCard consumers/parsers MUST IGNORE these properties if they are found within an hCard. Instead. hCard to vCard converters SHOULD use the title of the page where the hCard is found (e.g. the <code><title></code> element in (X)HTML documents) to construct the NAME property, MAY output a PROFILE value of "<code>VCARD</code>" per RFC 2426, SHOULD use the URL of the page where the hCard is found to construct the SOURCE property (e.g. perhaps as a parameter to URL that converts hCards to vCards), for an output vCard stream (e.g. a .vcf file).

=== Implied "N" Optimization ===

Although vCard requires that the "N" property be present, the authors of the vCard specification (RFC 2426) themselves do not include "N" properties in their vCards near the end of the spec (p.38). This apparent contradiction can be resolved by simply allowing the "FN" property to imply "N" property values in typical cases provided in the spec. We do so explicitly in hCard.

If the value of the "FN" property is exactly two words (separated by whitespace.), and there is no explicit "N" property, then the "N" property is inferred from the "FN" property. For "FN"s with either one word or three or more, then the author MUST explicitly markup the "N".

# The content of "FN" is broken into two "words" separated by whitespace.
# The ''first'' word of the "FN" is interpreted as the "Given Name" for the "N" property.
# The ''second/last'' word of the "FN" is interpreted as the "Family Name" for the "N" property.
# Exception: If the first word ends in a "," comma OR if the second word is a single character (optionally followed by a period "."), then the first word (minus the comma at the end if any) is interpreted as the "Family Name" and the second word is interpreted as the "Given Name".

This allows simplification in the typical case of people stating their firstname space lastname.

=== Implied "organization-name" Optimization ===

The "ORG" property has two subproperties, organization-name and organization-unit. Very often authors only publish the organization-name. Thus if an "ORG" property has no "organization-name" inside it, then its entire contents MUST be treated as the "organization-name".

=== XMDP Profile ===

See [[hcard-profile]] for the [http://gmpg.org/xmdp XMDP] profile of hCard.

== Example ==
Here is a sample vCard:

<code><pre><nowiki>
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
N:Çelik;Tantek
FN:Tantek Çelik
URL:http://tantek.com
ORG:Technorati
END:VCARD
</nowiki></pre></code>

and an equivalent in hCard with various elements optimized appropriately. See [[hcard-example1-steps| hCard Example 1]] for the derivation.

<code><pre><nowiki>
<div class="vcard">
<a class="url fn" href="http://tantek.com/">
Tantek Çelik
</a>
<div class="org">Technorati</div>
</div>
</nowiki></pre></code>

This hCard might be displayed as::

[http://tantek.com/ Tantek Çelik]<br />
Technorati

Note: The version information is unnecessary in hCard markup directly since the version will be defined by the profile of hCard that is used/referred to in the 'profile' attribute of the <head> element.

== Examples in the wild ==
This section is '''informative'''.

The following sites have published hCards, and thus are a great place to start for anyone looking for examples "in the wild" to try parsing, indexing, organizing etc. If you have an hCard on your own page, feel free to add it to the top of this list. Once the list grows too big, we'll make a separate wiki page.

* Cori Schlegel has published a full hCard on his [http://kinrowan.net/contact contact page] and an abbreviated version (linked to the full version) in the sidebar of his [http://kinrowan.net blog].
* [http://cinematreasures.org Cinema Treasures] uses hCard to markup venue information for 10,000+ movie theaters.
* [http://thedredge.org Andy Hume] uses the hcard format to mark-up the names and URLs of commentors on his blog.
* [http://www.wolfsreign.com Steven Ametjan] has published his hCard on [http://www.wolfsreign.com/about/ his about page].
* [http://evdb.com EVDB], the Events and Venues Database, publishes all venue detail pages with embedded hCards.
* [http://paulschreiber.com/blog/ Paul Schreiber]'s [http://concerts.shrub.ca/ Sunnyvale House Concerts] site publishes hCards for upcoming artists, as well as an hCard for the page itself. In addition the [http://concerts.shrub.ca/shows Past Shows] page contains hCards for all past artists.
* [http://zooibaai.nl/ Rob Mientjes] has published his hCard on [http://zooibaai.nl/about his about page].
* [http://gbraad.survion.com/ Gerard Braad] has published an example on his [http://gbraad.survion.com/site/?p=profile profile] page that is almost consistent with his original [http://gbraad.survion.com/files/gbraad.vcf vCard] file.
* [http://doncrowley.blogspot.com/ Don Crowley] has published [http://www.crowley.nl/hcard.html his hCard] as well as a nifty hCard button: http://www.crowley.nl/images/hcard.png
* [http://technorati.com/ Technorati]'s [http://www.technorati.com/about/ About page] lists their '''Media Contact''', and their [http://www.technorati.com/about/news.html Press page] also lists their '''Press Contact''', both as inline hCards.
* [http://tantek.com/log Tantek's Thoughts] includes an inline author hCard at the bottom of the page.

== Implementations ==
This section is '''informative'''.

The following implementations have been developed which either generate or parse hCards. If you have an hCard implementation, feel free to add it to the top of this list. Once the list grows too big, we'll make a separate wiki page.

* [http://thedredge.org/ Andrew D. Hume] has built a system (Wordpress plugin?) for [http://thedredge.org/2005/06/using-hcards-in-your-blog/ using hcards in your blog] to represent people leaving comments on blog posts.
* The [http://tantek.com/microformats/hcard-creator.html hCard creator] is a very simple, yet illustrative, open source user interface / form / script which creates an hCard in real-time as you type in a set of contact information.
* [http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc2629.xslt rfc2629.xslt] now attempts to generate hCard information ([http://ietf.org/rfc/rfc2629 RFC2629] is an XML format for authoring RFCs and Internet Drafts, see [http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc2629xslt/rfc2629xslt.html example document])
* [http://tantek.com/microformats/buddylist2hcards.html iChat buddy list to hCards] - Open source AppleScript to automatically convert one's buddy list in the MacOSX iChat AIM client into a valid XHTML 1.0 Strict list of hCards.
* [http://suda.co.uk/projects/X2V/ X2V] is a bookmarklet that parses hCard and produces a .vcf (vCard) stream. Note: needs to be updated as the spec is refined
* Support for hCard announced for a future version:
** [http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/openpsa-2-preview-1-released.html OpenPSA2]

== References ==
=== Normative References ===
* [http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/REC-xhtml1-20020801/ XHTML 1.0 SE]
* [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2426.txt vCard RFC2426]

=== Informative References ===
* [http://w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1 CSS1]
* [http://tantek.com/log/2004/09.html#hcard hCard term introduced and defined on the Web, 20040930]
* [http://wiki.oreillynet.com/foocamp04/index.cgi?SimpleSemanticFormats FOO Camp 2004 Simple Semantic Formats presentation, 20040910]
* Contributed from http://developers.technorati.com/wiki/hCard.
* [http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11 XHTML 1.1]

=== Similar Work ===
* [[hcalendar]]
* [[XOXO]]
* [http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/PaceBetterPersonElement Atom PaceBetterPersonElement]

== Work in progress ==
This specification is a work in progress. As additional aspects are discussed, understood, and written, they will be added. There is a separate document where we are keeping our brainstorms and other explorations relating to hCard:

* [[hcard-brainstorming|hCard Brainstorming]]

== Discussions ==

* See [http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/referer.html blogs discussing this page].

=== Q&A ===
* If you have any questions about hCard, check the [[hcard-faq|hCard FAQ]], and if you don't find answers, add your questions!

=== Issues ===
* Please add any issues with the specification to the separate [[hcard-issues|hCard issues]] document.

hreview-faq

2005-06-27T21:31:13Z

CoriSchlegel: question about limited types

= hReview FAQ =

This page is for documenting Q&A about [[hreview|hReview]].

* Q: ''Some of the values for the 'type' field could use some more details, and some specific examples might be useful. In particular, I wonder about the 'product' type. If you are reviewing a book, a movie on DVD (or in a theater, for that matter), or a music CD, should you use the product type? Or since you're typically reviewing the content, and not the literal, physical product, should you just not specify a type? Or should there be a 'media' type? Also, what is the difference between the 'website' and 'url' type? --[[User:Dougal Campbell|Dougal Campbell]] 11:54, 21 Jun 2005 (PDT) ''
** A: Tantek says: I'll get to this in a few minutes. Have to go have brunch with parents now!

* Q: ''I'm curious as to why the limited list of types, and why it needs to be limited to the 7 values listed. I can see the benefit of limiting it somewhat, but limiting it also assumes in a sense that nothing else would be reviewed, or that users of the structured data don't care to know the type of those other items. What if I want to use hReview to review a podcast, for example? I could shove that into one of the types already defined, but none are quite the right fit. Am I missing something? [[User:CoriSchlegel|CoriSchlegel]] 14:31, 27 Jun 2005 (PDT)''

Microformats Wiki - User contributions [en]

hcard

hreview-faq