vcard-suggestions

vCard suggestions

As a result of experience using hCard to markup people, organizations, and contact information in general on real world websites, we have discovered a few aspects of RFC 2426 vCard that could be improved. Thus we are documenting suggestions for improving vCard here as we find them, organized by RFC 2426 section number for improvements to current properties, and a "new" section for new properties.

Authors

Tantek Çelik, Andy Mabbett

Suggestions for Existing Properties

Suggestions for improvement could include new features and other such more major changes to the specification, organized under headings that reflect RFC 2426 vCard section numbers and heading. For documentation of errors, corrections, errata for vCard, please see vcard-errata.

3.3.1 TEL Type Definition

• The "type" for "TEL" lacks a "textphone" option (for the devices used by, e.g., people who are deaf or have speech difficulties. Example: Birmingham City Council (303 1119). It may be good to consider adding a "textphone" value to the "type" for "TEL".
  • +0 Tantek: I think a rethinking of the taxonomy of TEL types is merited, but I am uncertain whether it is worth growing the existing limited taxonomy or instead permitting user defined TEL types and thus allowing for natural evolution of a folksonomy of TEL types.
  • +1 Andy Mabbett: There are a limited number of types. Note also the cell vs. mobile issue.

Suggestions for New Properties

Gender

• There is no Card property for gender. A workaround: add the tag/category "male", "female", etc. See also earlier discussion.
  • -1 Tantek: I think tags/categories are good enough for now.
  • +1 Andy Mabbett:Tags are often not appropriate, as per the cited discussion.

Deceased

• There is no way to mark up a person as being deceased - either by a "deceased" flag or date-of-death. A workaround: add the tag/category "deceased". See also mailing list post on tagging for 'deceased'
  • -1 Tantek: I think tags/categories are good enough for now.
  • +1 Andy Mabbett: Tags are often not appropriate, as per the cited e-mail. DoD is more specific (and often used in real life biographies and obituaries e.g van Gogh on Wikipedia).

Note

On 2006-11-24, Paul Hoffman of the Internet Mail Consortium, responsible for the development and promotion the vCard standard, wrote in response to an e-mail from Andy Mabbett informing him of this web page:

There has been almost no interest in revising the vCard standard. This is due to lack of momentum, not the lack of good suggestions.

See Also

• vCard errata
• hCard
• vCard mailing list - a place to raise these issues, and where similar issues can be found.