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<h1> hCard Brainstorming </h1>
{{DISPLAYTITLE: hCard Brainstorming }}
This page is for brainstorming about various uses and details of [[hcard|hCard]].
This page is for brainstorming about various uses and details of [[hcard|hCard]].  This page contains <em>proposals</em>.  For the current state please see [[hcard|hCard]].


__TOC__
Brainstorm proposals that illustrate how to use the existing hCard spec will likely be incorporated into existing hCard documentation such as:
* [[hcard-authoring]]
* [[hcard-examples]]
* ... and potentially additional documentation.


== Authors ==
Proposals that are minor bug fixes or enhancements may be incorporated into hCard 1.0.1. See the [[#for_hCard_1.0.1|for hCard 1.0.1 section]] below.
 
Proposals that are more substantial enhancements such as new hCard properties may be incorporated into hCard 1.1. See the [[#for_hCard_1.1|for hCard 1.1 section]] below.
 
== Editors ==
* [http://suda.co.uk/ Brian Suda]
* [http://suda.co.uk/ Brian Suda]
* [http://tantek.com/ Tantek Çelik] (formerly of [http://technorati.com Technorati, Inc])
* [http://tantek.com/ Tantek Çelik]
 
== Contributors ==
* [[User:Atamido|Atamido]]
* [[User:ChrisMessina|ChrisMessina]]
* [[User:DimitriGlazkov|DimitriGlazkov]]
* [[User:AndyMabbett|Andy Mabbett]]
* ...
* ... and many others


== Problems Being Solved ==
== Problems Being Solved ==
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* annoying "update your contact info" email from various centralized contact info services
* annoying "update your contact info" email from various centralized contact info services
* [[social-network-portability]] through the use of [[hcard-supporting-user-profiles|hCard supporting user profiles]] and [[hcard-xfn-supporting-friends-lists|hCard+XFN supporting friends lists]]
* [[social-network-portability]] through the use of [[hcard-supporting-user-profiles|hCard supporting user profiles]] and [[hcard-xfn-supporting-friends-lists|hCard+XFN supporting friends lists]]
== FN Nickname semantic ==
There are many sites (e.g. [http://flickr.com Flickr], [http://consumating.com/ Consumating]) which permit the user to '''both''' have a multi-word login/handle/alias, '''and''' not show their ''real'' name (fn, n, given-name, family-name etc.).
For the people represented by the profile pages of these sites, the best we can do is mark-up their login/handle/alias as their "nickname". Originally, we had thought that such handles etc. were single words only, and thus we created the [[hcard#Implied_.22nickname.22_Optimization|Implied nickname optimization]] accordingly, where you can markup the handle as an "fn", and have it automatically set a "nickname" property value, and empty values for all the "n" sub-values.
In order to deal with multi-word handles, similar to the [[hcard#Organization_Contact_Info|hCard Organization contact info]] method, the following is proposed:
=== "fn" and "nickname" combination ===
Due to the use of potentially multi-word nicknames/handles/usernames in content published on the Web, (e.g. on sites like [http://flickr.com Flickr] and [http://consumating.com/ Consumating]), hCard has a mechanism for specifying a multi-word "fn" that is also a "nickname" without affecting any "n" sub-properties that are otherwise specified, and explicitly implying empty defaults for "n" sub-properties.
Similar to the [[hcard#Implied_.22nickname.22_Optimization|implied "nickname" optimization]], if the "fn" property and a "nickname" property have the exact same value (typically because they are set on the same element, e.g. <code>class="fn nickname"</code>), then
# The content of the "fn" is treated as a "nickname" property value.
# Parsers should handle the missing "n" property by implying empty values for all the "n" sub-properties.
== Implied FN from N ==
Since the "n" property is more detailed and structured than the "fn" property, and [[hcard-examples-in-wild]] have shown that very often what is specified for "n" sub-properties is also specified for the "fn" property, we could add the following implied "fn" optimization which would permit sites to only use "n" and its subproperties.
In addition, some sites don't have contiguous uninterrupted text that represents the desired "fn" value, and would much rather have the "fn" implied from "n" subproperties.  E.g. "Citizen Space Citizens" on [[hcard-examples-in-wild]].
=== implied "fn" from "n" optimization ===
If an hCard has no "fn", yet has an "n" property with one or more subproperties, then the "fn" property value can be implied by concatenating the "n" subproperty values as follows, with a space between each subproperty value, and multiple subproperty instances.
* 'honorific-prefix'es (as found in document order)
* 'given-name'
* 'additional-name's (as found in document order)
* 'family-name'
* 'honorific-suffix'es (as found in document order)
== Implied N from its subproperties ==
Since the "n" subproperties are sufficiently uniquely named (that is, they are not used by any other hCard property), and "n" is one of the [[hcard-singular-properties]], it is possible to consider leaving out the "n" property itself fo the hCard, and simply directlly using the subproperties, as properties of the hCard.
=== implied "n" from its subproperties ===
Proposal: If an hCard has no "fn" nor "n" properties, then the entire scope of the hCard could be considered to be inside an implied "n" property. 
E.g. this markup:
<pre><nowiki>
<span class="vcard">
<span class="given-name">Tantek</span>
<span class="family-name">Çelik</span>
</span>
</nowiki></pre>
would be treated from a parsing perspective as:
<pre><nowiki>
<span class="vcard"><span class="n">
<span class="given-name">Tantek</span>
<span class="family-name">Çelik</span>
</span></span>
</nowiki></pre>
Which, with the '''implied "fn" from "n" optimization''', would then be effectively treated as:
<pre><nowiki>
<span class="vcard"><span class="fn n">
<span class="given-name">Tantek</span>
<span class="family-name">Çelik</span>
</span></span>
</nowiki></pre>
* a related request from the mailing list: http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2007-September/010791.html
== Examples ==
* See [[hcard-examples]], which provides several illustrative instructive examples, as well as 1:1 hCard examples for each example in [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2426.txt RFC 2426].
=== Using RFC2806 with hCard ===
[http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2806.txt RFC 2806] defines the telephone scheme "tel:", "fax:" and "modem:" to handle phone communications with URIs in the same way, "mailto:" is defined for email. It's part of the list or registered schemes by IANA : [http://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) SCHEMES]
<pre><nowiki>
tel  telephone [RFC2806]
fax  fax      [RFC2806]
modem modem    [RFC2806]
</nowiki></pre>
It is practical to write your tel number like this.
<pre><nowiki>
<a class="tel"      href="tel:+1-919-555-7878">+1-919-555-7878</a>
</nowiki></pre>
or even
<pre><nowiki>
<a class="tel"      href="tel:+1-919-555-7878">Mr Smith's phone</a>
</nowiki></pre>
You can add support for "tel:" to your desktop and to your browser
* For Gnome, edit ~/.gnome/Gnome and add something to the URL Handlers section. (Dan Connolly uses this to get galeon to launch telnum from [http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/2001/telagent/ telagent sources] for tel URIs)
* In Mozilla, [http://dizzy.mozdev.org/ Dizzy]
* In Internet Explorer, [http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/networking/pluggable/overview/overview.asp Asynchronous Pluggable Protocols]
On the CSS front… You could for example add automagically an icon. I have put the property !important for those who wants to add it to their own stylesheet in their browsers, so they know type of links when browsing.
<pre><nowiki>
a[href^="tel:"]:before {
    content: '\260f  ' !important;
    padding-left: 20px !important; }
a[href^="mailto:"]:before {
    content: '\2709  ' !important;
    padding-left: 20px !important; }
</nowiki></pre>




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* Internet Relay Chat (IRC), use "irc:" URLs.
* Internet Relay Chat (IRC), use "irc:" URLs.


== Auto-Discovery ==
A suggestion relating to the rise of VoIP protocol (Skype, etc):


=== Representative hCard discovery ===
Should these protocols be marked up using the <code><nowiki><span type="tel"></nowiki></code>. It seems logical that a means to communicate with another via voice should be marked up as a telephone address, rather than the currently suggested URL property.
Ways to auto discover the representative hCard for a page, that is the hCard that is the person (or organization) that the page represents.


Applications for auto-discovery of the representative hCard for the page
== Auto-Discovery ==
* representative vCard auto extraction from the page
* profile icon discovery (e.g. what people use gravatar for and have proposed pavatar for).
* [[social-network-portability]]
 
Related but slightly different concepts:
* contact for the page.  similarly, the person a page represents is usually the person to contact for/about the page.  as [[hcard-faq#Should_I_use_ADDRESS_for_hCards|documented in the hCard FAQ]], the contact for a page {{should}} be marked up with an  <code>&lt;address&gt;</code> hCard.
* author hCard.  typically the person that a page represents is also the author of the page. possible (theoretical until someone finds/cites real world) examples: biographies, e.g. a page that represents person A is authored by person B.
** common misconception: ''"[http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2007-July/010170.html using &lt;address&gt; works when the person is the principal author of the page]"''.  This is misleading at best. It may "work", but <code>&lt;address&gt;</code> means <em>contact</em> for the page (as documented above), not necessarily the <em>author</em>.  The two might coincidentally (even typically) be the same, but are not semantically equivalent.
* owner hCard.  more often than not, the person that a page represents is also the person that owns (meaning has primary control over, in the property sense) the page.
 
Methodology for a solution:
The preferred option is to use only visible semantic HTML ([[POSH]]).
 
User scenario:
Here is a scenario that outlines the proposed auto-discovery process:
 
# I (as user) give the URL of my homepage or hCard or other profile URL, to a site that wants a profile icon
# That site goes and gets it (e.g. using [[hKit]]), and then:
## checks to see if there is an hCard with a "url" property on a rel="me" hyperlink (since rel="me" only works from a whole page to a whole page, if an hCard contains such a URL, then that hCard must represent the page. see [http://gmpg.org/xfn/and/#idconsolidation XFN identity consolidation] for more details.), and uses it if it finds it. (if there is more than one such hCard on the page? for now use the first such hCard.)
## checks to see if there is an hCard with a "url" property that points to the current page, and uses it if it finds it. similar to the above rel="me" case, if an hCard is pointing to the current page, then it is likely that the hCard is about the current page. (if there is more than one such hCard on the page? for now use the first such hCard.)
## checks to see if there is an <nowiki><address></nowiki> hCard (thus meaning contact for the page), and uses it if it finds it. (what if there is more than one such hCard on the page? e.g. such as the multiple address hCards for hAtom entries. for now use the first such hCard.)
## otherwise uses the first hCard it finds (which in cases of profile URLs which have a single hCard like on [http://flickr.com Flickr] and [http://technorati.com/ Technorati], will work as expected).
# The site looks in the hCard for a "logo" property and uses the first one if it finds any.
# Otherwise it looks for a "photo" property and uses the first one if it finds any.
# Otherwise the site uses a default icon, but subscribes to the URL with the hCard and checks it for a "logo" or "photo", say, once a day.
 
=== vCard link rel auto-discovery ===
 
A similar possibility is an auto discovery link in the head of the document could point to a URL (perhaps with transform) to a vCard version of the representative hCard.
 
On the page with the hCard encoding, the best link would be as follows:
<code><nowiki> <link rel="alternate" type="text/directory" href="..." /> </nowiki></code>
this HTML page is an alternate view of the vCard. 
 
The [http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/text/ registered and appropriate type] for vCard entities is “text/directory”, as defined in Internet RFC 2425, “[http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2425.txt A MIME Content-Type for Directory Information]”. RFC 2426, “[http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2425.txt vCard MIME Directory Profile]”, specifies the vCard profile for “text/directory” entities, which profile the MIME/HTTP header field “Content-Type” would indicate with a “profile” parameter whose value is “VCARD”.
 
It is unclear whether the HTML/XHTML “type” attribute allows values with parameters. On 2004-05-23, [http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de/ Björn Höhrmann] sent to the [http://www.w3.org/2002/05/html/charter HTML Working Group] a [http://www.w3.org/mid/40ccdc4d.97400945@smtp.bjoern.hoehrmann.de request for clarification] on the issue.
 
When on a different page, referencing that encoded page in the href would ''not'' be an alternate view of the current page.  Therefore rel="alternate" may not be appropriate.  The problem of what rel value to use is bigger than links to vCards.
 
=== hCard to hCard relationships ===
 
There are several types of hCard to hCard relationships, that is, one hCard hyperlinking to another hCard which would beneift from the explicit rel values that described the specific relationship.
 
==== mini hCard to expanded hCard ====


Perhaps the most common type of hCard to hCard link is a mini hCard, e.g. from a personal home page or blog to the person's contact/about page, perhaps consisting of only a name and URL, that links to an expanded hCard.  Examples in the wild:
See [[hcard-brainstorming-autodiscovery]]
 
In this instance, possible rel values might include:
* rel="expanded"
* rel="definitive" - the problem with this is that the expanded hCard is not necessarily a definitive version.
* rel="canonical" - similarly, the expanded hCard is not necessarily at a canonical URL.  It may simply be *an* expanded version, not *the* expanded version.
 
The following rel values have been suggested, but are not really a good idea due to the fact that they imply a dependence to add a new rel value for any new microformat which might have a mini-version linking to a more expanded version:
* rel="author"
* rel='contact'
* rel="contactinfo"
* rel='hcard'
* rel='person'
 
Here are some more generic values that have been suggested which perhaps make even less sense:
* rel='microformat' - this doesn't make any sense when you imagine a world where nearly every web page contains microformats.
* rel='about' - what does "about" have to do with a person or even authorship?
* rel="profile" - should be reserved for meaning here is an [[xmdp|XMDP]] profile for the current page.
* rel='PIM' - not sure about how this makes any sense either.
 
==== mini hCard to remote site ====
Per the instructions in [[hcard-examples]] for [[hcard-examples#References_to_People_in_Blogrolls|marking up people in blogrolls]], you might have an hCard of your site for another person which then links to that other person's website.  Should there be a rel value that indicates this "mini-hCard" to "person" relationship?
 
==== mini hCards and nearby expanded hCard links ====
Some authors include mini-hCards on their pages of themselves (e.g. in their blog posts), and yet those mini-hCards don't actually point to more expanded versions.  However, sometimes they have a separate but nearby link on the same page like "about" or "contact" that does link to an expanded hCard.
 
E.g. on [http://factoryjoe.com/blog/ FactoryCity], blog posts have mini-hCards for "published by", e.g. (white space added for readability):
<pre><nowiki>
Published by
<span class="vcard author">
<a href="http://factoryjoe.com/blog/author/factoryjoe/" class="url fn">
  Chris Messina
</a>
</span>
</nowiki></pre>
 
On those same blog pages, there is a link labeled "Contact Information" that links to http://factoryjoe.com/blog/hcard/ which has an hCard with more information like phone number, birthday etc.
 
 
=== Auto-Discovery for XFN ===
 
An author will typically their XFN information on a specific page, rather than all pages.  In particular, a specific page separate from the home page of their blog, and thus it would be useful to have an explicit rel value to assist in auto-discovery of XFN information.
 
This was suggested by Jens Alfke on 20050606 at the WWDC blogger's dinner.


== geo improvements ==
== geo improvements ==
''See [[geo-brainstorming]]''
''See [[geo-brainstorming]]''
== how to use with HTML5 ==
Per [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Jun/0811.html Theresa O'Connor's email to public-html]:
Add a section in hCard describing how to use hCard in [[HTML5]], including optional use of HTML5's &lt;time&gt; element and microdata feature. Encourage [[HTML5]] to drop the "vcard" predefined microdata vocabulary and reference an updated hCard spec instead. [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]


== Other use cases ==
== Other use cases ==
Line 256: Line 60:
*Calculate and display the subject's age "as of today".
*Calculate and display the subject's age "as of today".
*Calculate and display the subject's age at death (if a [[hcard-date-of-death|Date of Death]] is available)
*Calculate and display the subject's age at death (if a [[hcard-date-of-death|Date of Death]] is available)
*Generate an recurring iCal for a living subject's birthday
*Generate a recurring iCal for a living subject's birthday
*Generate an recurring iCal for a dead subject's "anniversary of birth" (if a [[hcard-date-of-death|Date of Death]] is available)
*Generate a recurring iCal for a dead subject's "anniversary of birth" (if a [[hcard-date-of-death|Date of Death]] is available)
*...
*...


Line 406: Line 210:


== Parsing ==
== Parsing ==
See separate [[hcard-parsing|hCard parsing]] page for current hCard parsing rules.


Add thoughts/proposals to improve/add to hCard parsing here in this section in hCard brainstorming, and be sure to include URLs to examples of hCards in the wild which could benefit from parsing rule changes.
See [[hcard-parsing-brainstorming]]


=== Additional Semantic HTML handling ===
== Birthday Reminders ==
==== <code>acronym</code> element handling ====
*hCard consumers could calculate the current age of hCard subjects, from the DoB. [[User:AndyMabbett|Andy Mabbett]] 07:47, 20 Apr 2007 (PDT)
Choices:
*for hCards with DoB, hCard consumers could generate and export a recurring hCalendar. [[User:AndyMabbett|Andy Mabbett]] 08:06, 20 Apr 2007 (PDT)
* Explicitly treat <code>acronym</code> the same as <code>abbr</code>, per semantics of the '<code>title</code>' attribute on <code>acronym</code> in particular, as defined in HTML4.01.
**If/ when [[hcard-date-of-death|Date of Death]] is added to hCard, parsers could instead generate a recurring "death-anniversary" hCalendar. [[User:AndyMabbett|Andy Mabbett]] 08:08, 20 Apr 2007 (PDT)
* Explicitly treat <code>acronym</code> the same as <code>span</code>, and discourage use of <code>acronym</code>.


==== <code>input</code> element handling ====
== key property for webid ==
In [[hcard-parsing]], I've defined special-case handling for several elements according to [[hcard-parsing#more_semantic_exceptions|more semantic exceptions]], e.g. textual properties on the <code>img</code> element use the 'alt' attribute.
[[vCard]] has a 'key' property which has seen little use on real world web pages as part of [[hCard]].


One element I forgot at the time was the <code>input</code> element, specifically, <code><nowiki><input type="text"></nowiki></code>. Another I forgot was the <code>textarea</code> element.
However, there are plenty of easily findable real world [[key-examples|examples of people publishing their public keys]] in visible text on web pages, and thus it's reasonable to include (keep) the 'key' property to mark those up.


The simple suggestion is to add the following to [[hcard-parsing]], specifically to the [[hcard-parsing#all_properties|all properties]] sub-section:
What's missing is a recommended processing model and/or user flow for making use of such publicly published public keys in the 'key' property of hCard.


* <code>&lt;input type="text" value="..."&gt;</code>: use the value of the 'value' attribute. If there is no 'value' attribute then treat the value as empty. Interactive user-agents {{must}} use the [http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#current-value current value] of the element.
One possible such processing model and user flow is that described by the [[http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebID W3C WebID effort]].
** consider other input types also (e.g. checkbox, radio, hidden) and specify how to parse them as well.
* <code>&lt;textarea&gt;</code>: use the text contents of the element. Interactive user-agents {{must}} use the [http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#current-value current value] of the element.


[[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
It seems at least theoretically possible to use the vCard/hCard 'key' property to represent the necessary information in a profile for webid functionality.[http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xg-webid/2012Jan/0355.html]


==== forms auto-fill ====
In particular, perhaps the upcoming digest (di) URI scheme may also help with this:
If you go to a site that needs your contact info for something, say an ecommerce site for checkout, and if the form fields are marked up with hCard semantics per the above, then perhaps we could consider having that mean "insert hCard here".
* http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hallambaker-digesturi-02


Interactive useragents (e.g. [[operator]] on [[firefox]]) could detect such "insert hCard here" semantics in forms on pages, and let you "pre-fill" with *your* hCard info, and then all of a sudden we have a standard for forms auto-fill, rather than all the hacks that have gone into browsers since 1999 (starting with IE4.5/Mac which I'm pretty sure was the first to do forms auto-fill of an entire form with a single button press - not just auto-complete of each form field individually).
=== di: (DIGEST) URI scheme exploitation ===


Obviously this would make sense to build into *existing* forms auto-fill features in [[Firefox]] and [[IE]], and any other browsers that support it.
Example of an hCard snippet  with di: scheme URI handled where  "fingerprint" holds the hash of your local x.509 certificate:


This way new sites could simply conform to the standard, rather than depend on hacks which parse label values etc. and imply things and get them wrong sometimes.
<a class="fingerprint" href="di:md5;nXVtqM9r5r6yncqI4muYDQ?hashtag=webid&amp;uri=http%3A%2F%2Fid.myopenlink.net%2Fc%2FBNP43U">Fingerprint</a>


'''[[i18n]]''' advantages: hCard annotated form inputs would also be more international, thus avoiding the need for each browser to guess what is the "name" and "telephone" field in every language, so they can do forms auto-fill on any site regardless of language, not just English.
==== Complete Example ====
 
<div id="hcard" class="vcard">
    <a class="url fn" href="http://linkeddata.uriburner.com/about/id/http/idehen.me/2012/01/27/identity-verification-via-blog-post/">kingsley Uyi Idehen (ProxyURI DI scheme Post2)</a>
    <a class="email" href="mailto:kidehen@openlinksw.com">kidehen@openlinksw.com</a>
    <a class="key" href="data:application/x-x509-user-cert;base64,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">Public Key</a>
    <a class="fingerprint" href="di:md5;nXVtqM9r5r6yncqI4muYDQ?hashtag=webid&amp;uri=http%3A%2F%2Fid.myopenlink.net%2Fc%2FBNP43U">Fingerprint</a>
  </div>


[[User:Tantek|Tantek]] 16:24, 23 Jul 2007 (PDT)


==== Background discussion: ====
=== hCard and WebID ===


Key threads:
Next steps are to post sample hCards that attempt to represent required webid information:
* http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2006-September/005951.html
* http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2006-October/006132.html
* http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2007-January/008312.html


* example from Kingsley Idehen (discussed initially in [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xg-webid/2012Jan/0525.html WebID IG mailing list hCard + WebID thread])
* actual functioning example for certificate:
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----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-----END CERTIFICATE-----


Somewhat related:
* http://microformats.org/wiki/rest/forms-brainstorming
* http://microformats.org/wiki/rest/forms-examples


One key summary:
<div id="hcard" class="vcard">
* http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2006-October/006172.html
    <a class="url fn" href="http://id.myopenlink.net/mv/data/afacf6b868e6cb36f71d2cecc6d531a26ce1f2ef#this">@kidehen (BrowerID 2)</a>
    <a class="email" href="mailto:kidehen@openlinksw.com">kidehen@openlinksw.com</a>
    <a class="key" href="data:application/x-x509-user-cert;base64,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">Public Key</a>
    <a class="key" href="http://id.myopenlink.net/certgen/cert/213">Public Key Ref</a>
  </div>


The options discussed in a hypothetical hCard input system so far appear to be:
This exploration could help document how the hCard 'key' property should be used, and perhaps even written up at least as examples/suggestions in the hCard spec itself.


1) create a new root class other than vcard to indicate a form that's
TODO:  we need an hCard field for holding a crypto hash (e.g., SHA1 or MD5) of an x.509 certificate. There's already [http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hallambaker-digesturi-02 data: scheme URI] in place for this purpose.
fillable with hCard data.


Proposed markup:
=== Usage Scenario Examples ===


<pre><nowiki>
==== Exposing Your WebID ====
<form class="vcard-input" ...>
Use a blog post ([http://kidehen.blogspot.com/2012/01/hcard-webid-test-post.html like this]) to publicize information that serves as a declaration of identity verifiable by me, using the WebID protocol. Once in place, structured data middleware can then ingest the blog post and produce a Linked Data resource that's available in a variety of formats that includes: HTML ([http://linkeddata.uriburner.com/about/id/entity/http/kidehen.blogspot.com/2012/01/hcard-webid-test-post.html#hcard like this]), and many others (just look at footer section of the sample HTML page).
  <fieldset class="fn">
      <input type="text" class="given-name" name="first_name" />
      <input type="text" class="family-name" name="last_name" />
  </fieldset>
  ...
</form>
</nowiki></pre>


  Benefits:
==== Using hCard to facilitate WebID verification ====
      Doesn't overcomplicate hCard with new parsing rules,
Actually used hCard embedded in a blog post to create a resource that's looked up by a WebID verifier. Basically, the verifier is following the URL from the subjectAlternativeName (SAN) extension in an x.509 certificate to an HTML resource that contains embedded hCard.  
      doesn't require rewrite of existing parsers to ignore 'unparsable' data.
  Drawbacks:
      Requires completely new parsers to be written.
      Existing parsers would ignore data even if a valid hCard could be extracted.
 
2) extend hCard's parsing rules to cover form elements and relying on
the FORM/INPUT semantics to indicate that stuff is inputtable.
 
Proposed markup:
 
<pre><nowiki>
<form ...>
<div class="vcard">
  <fieldset class="fn">
      <input type="text" class="given-name" name="first_name" value="Rob" />
      <input type="text" class="family-name" name="last_name" value="Manson" />
  </fieldset>
  ...
</div>
<div class="vcard">
  <fieldset class="fn">
      <input type="text" class="given-name" name="first_name" value="Scott" />
      <input type="text" class="family-name" name="last_name" value="Reynen" />
  </fieldset>
  ...
</div>
</form>
</nowiki></pre>
 
  Benefits:
      Small addition to existing format rather than new one.
      Semantics of an input form and the eventual display format are the same.
  Drawbacks:
      Existing parsers would/could parse forms as invalid hCards, would need re-writing.
 
 
Broader question:
* http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2005-September/001059.html
Should this be extended beyond just hCard?
 
==== Key Issues/discussion points ====
* Extending parsing rules to extract value attributes from <input type="text|hidden"> fields
  - ''Negative'' : this require adding a bit of special case to existing parsers to handle these elements
  - ''Positive'' : this could help to enable uf based auto form filling
  - ''Negative'' : this could help to enable uf based auto form filling (e.g. spam automation)
* Existing server side and client side scripts use non-hCard field names so class is the most seamless extension point
  - ''Positive'' : this is in line with the current parsing model
* Many parsers (e.g. [[Operator]]) parse the loaded html not the dynamic DOM
  - ''Negative'' : parser doesn't pickup any updated form data after the page has loaded
  - e.g. even though textarea appears to parse ok - it's only ever the initially loaded value that can be exported
* Forms may contain more than one hCard so using <FORM class="vcard"> should not be required
  - ''Positive'' : this minimises the changes to current parsing rules
* Empty values should be ignored when extracting hCards
* hCards with all empty values should be ignored when listing/extracting hCards
* Which form elements should be supported beyond input fields
  - ''Examples''
    - title select that lists mr/mrs/ms/dr/etc.
    - checkboxes to choose which addresses to use
  - ''Option'' : simplify extension to only support input fields and recommend that select's, radio buttons and checkboxes update related hidden input fields with simple javascript (e.g. onChange/Click="this.form.elements[this.className].value = this.value")
    - Unworkable.  Cannot require clientside javascript.
  - ''Positive'' : this would simplify parsing and server side form processing as only single input fields for each value need to be used/validated
  - ''Negative'' : hCard forms then require javascript if they use form elements other than basic <input type="text|hidden">
  - ''Comment'' : either way any auto form filling will be more complex beyond simple <input type="text|hidden"> fields
    - hypothetical comment assuming more complexity beyond.
 
[[User:RobManson|RobManson]]
 
=== multiple type parsing ===
* Multiple Type parsing / Type Optimization:  The spec allows for, and the [[hcard-authoring#Phone_Numbers|hcard-authoring]] demonstrate the use of multiple type designations for a single value of tel. The syntax used in the authoring examples where each seems like it could become cumbersome. As these type designations are all single 'word' strings it may be possible to implement additional parsing rules to allow for multiple types inside the same HTML element. Handling delimiters may be an issue [space, comma, etc?], and some in-the-wild usage of multiple types would need to be located and examined before considering additional parsing rules along these lines [ [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] 10:21, 16 Apr 2007 (PDT) ]
 
=== fax and modem hyperlink parsing ===
For the "tel" property in particular, when the element is:
* <code>&lt;a href="fax:..."&gt;</code> OR <code>&lt;area href="fax:..."&gt;</code> : parse the value of the 'href' attribute, omitting the "fax:" prefix and any "?" query suffix (if present), in the attribute. For details on the "fax:" URL scheme, see RFC 2806. In addition, treat this 'tel' property instance as having subproperty type "fax" in addition to any explicit subproperty type specified on the 'tel' property.
* <code>&lt;a href="modem:..."&gt;</code> OR <code>&lt;area href="modem:..."&gt;</code> : parse the value of the 'href' attribute, omitting the "modem:" prefix and any "?" query suffix (if present), in the attribute. For details on the "modem:" URL scheme, see RFC 2806.  In addition, treat this 'tel' property instance as having subproperty type "modem" in addition to any explicit subproperty type specified on the 'tel' property.
 
=== Ambiguous name components ===
 
When automatically publishing hCards from pre-existing data, it's not necessarily possible to tell which words in a name map to which hCard properties. When the structure of a name is unknown, it is hard to ensure an automatically published hCard remains valid.
 
There's currently no easy answer to this.
 
One implementation suggestion is a 'best-guess' algorithm, something along the lines of:
 
# If the name is one word, attempt [[hcard#Implied_.22nickname.22_Optimization|implied nickname optimization]]
# If the name is two words, attempt [[hcard#Implied_.22n.22_Optimization|implied n optimization]]
# For three or more words
## Perform a lookup against known sub-name combinations (e.g. 'Sarah Jane', 'Vander Wal')
## Apply the grammar "given-name additional-name(s) family-name"
 
The principal behind this suggestion is that it's better to make a good guess and potentially miscategorize an ambiguous name component than to generate an invalid hCard.
 
===ADR with no children===
Parsers (Operator, Tails, Almost Universal Microformat Parser) currently expect <code>adr</code> to have one or more sub-properties. It is not clear from the hCard spec that that's mandatory (though the vCard RFC requires it); nor is it always possible for an address field in a templated (or CMS) web site to be defined with such granularity.  
 
Consider Wikipedia, whose templates often have a "locale" or "place" field, used, for example, on these articles about railway stations:
 
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Street_station Old Street]
**"Place" ("locale" in the template) is a '''street'''
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamstead_railway_station Hamstead]
**"Place" is a '''local district'''
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverness_railway_station Inverness]
**"Place" is a '''city'''
 
Likewise, the Wikipedia template for organisations, in which a "headquarters" address (for a business, for example) may contain a full or partial postal address, or just a city/county or city/country pair:
 
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesco Tesco]
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BP BP]
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google Google]
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Coat_Systems Blue Coat Systems]
 
==== implied single adr subproperty ====
I propose that, where <code>adr</code> has content, but no explicit sub-properties, there should be a default sub-property to which that content is allocated, in order that it is captured by user agents, and can later be manually tweaked (in, say, an address book programme) by users if so desired. This would satisfy the vCard requirement for child-of-adr, and adhere to the general principle to "[[be-strict|be strict in what you send but generous in what you receive]]".
*Note that there may be other reasons to consider this suggestion, such as "ease of authoring". Another way of looking at this suggestion is as a "adr/extended-address shorthand". [[User:Tantek|Tantek]] 08:28, 26 Mar 2007 (PDT)
 
* there is also a LABEL property which is NOT structured data, but purely a text string to be used when labeling. LABEL purpose: To specify the formatted text corresponding to delivery address of the object the vCard represents. [[User:Brian|Brian]] 13:18, 30 Mar 2007 (UTC)
**On re-reading this, it seems that none of the adressess given in my examples meet the criteria of being "''formatted text corresponding to delivery address''". [[User:AndyMabbett|Andy Mabbett]] 03:35, 17 Apr 2007 (PDT)
 
Of the available sub-property options:
 
*street-address
*extended-address
*region
*locality
 
I suggest that "extended-address" is the most sensible sub-property to use, for this purpose. [[User:AndyMabbett|Andy Mabbett]] 03:57, 26 Mar 2007 (PDT)
 
==== implied adr subproperties ====
It may be possible for parsers to parse out adr subproperties from a contiguous adr string.  This would be an optimization for both [[adr]] and [[hcard|hCard]].
 
This may also be too difficult/complex to be dependable or interoperable, but it is worth at least documenting our considerations and analysis either way.


Examples:
Examples:


[http://www.ibm.com/contact/employees/us/ IBM's Employee Directory] search [http://www.ibm.com/contact/employees/servlets/lookup?country=us&language=en&search_country=all&lastname=Kaply&firstname=Michael returns hCards with the "adr" property] which contain the "locality" and "country-name" data but unfortunately without being marked up as such, e.g.:
* [http://kidehen.blogspot.com/2012/01/hcard-inside-post-as-identity-provider.html Blogspot Post] -- via a live sample post
 
* [http://goo.gl/Tfup4 Howto Guide covering entire life cycle] -- creation, publication, and verification (basic URI which only works with verifiers that can transform hCard to RDF)
<pre><nowiki>
* [http://goo.gl/j2ei8 Howto Guide covering entire life cycle] -- creation, publication, and verification (leveraging a proxy/wrapper Linked Data URI that provides hCard to RDF conversion on behalf of WebID verifiers) .
<td class="adr">Austin, USA</td>
</nowiki></pre>
 
We could first define a canonical ordering of how to parse for comma (and perhaps in some cases space) separated adr subproperties within an adr string e.g.:
 
* 'post-office-box'
* 'street-address'
* 'extended-address'
* 'locality'
* 'region'
* 'postal-code'
* 'country-name'
 
Given a dictionary of country names and abbreviations, it may be feasible to parse for a country name at the end of the adr string, and then apply country/locale specific parsing rules to the rest of the adr string.
 
E.g.
* from a theoretical dictionary of country names:
** US|USA|United States|United States of America|Etats-Unis d'Amerique
* parse the remainder of the adr string backwards as follows:
** preceding that, look for a 5 or 9 digit (with optional dash '-' separator between digits 5 and 6) postal-code, and if found use it for the 'postal-code'
** preceding that, look for the name of a US state (e.g. California or any of the other states or territories available from a canonical list) or 2 letter state abbreviation (e.g. CA), and if found use it for the 'region' subproperty
** preceding that, look for the name of a US city (e.g. San Francisco, Los Angeles or any other US city available from a canonical list) or common city abbreviation (e.g. SF, LA), and if found use it for the 'locality'
** preceding that, look for common extended address details, such as: #|apt|apartment|suite|ste followed by a word consisting of letters and numbers, and if found use it for the 'extended-address'
** preceding that, look for a common street name bracketed by the street number (an integer with optional fraction and/or letter), and an optional street type (av|ave|avenue|blvd|boulevard|cir|circle|pl|place|st|street), and if found use it for the 'street-address'
** preceding that, look for a common post office box, with the pobox literal string: pob|pobox|PO Box followed by a word consisting of numbers and letters, and if found use it for the 'post-office-box'
* ... other countries
 
The above heuristic (not quite well specified enough to be an algorithm, yet) would allow parsing of the IBM Employee Directory result documented above.
 
There are a lot of existing geocoder APIs that turn unstructured addresses into structured ones - we should examine these for patterns and best practices. eg [http://www.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/#Geocoding_Structured Google's geocoder] [http://exogen.case.edu/projects/geopy/ geopy calls multiple ones]
 
==== adr without children FAQ ====
I think for now the simplest and most interoperable (and what I think implementations already do) is to make this an FAQ (because the spec already doesn't say to do anything with adr without any subproperty)
 
Q: What should a parser do with an "adr" property lacking any subproperties?
 
A: A parser SHOULD do nothing with such an "adr" property.  A parser MAY provide the text content of such an "adr" property in the results of its parsing as a freeform value of the "adr" property.  Note that the vCard standard does not allow for any such freeform value of its "adr" property (in vCard the "adr" property MUST be structured) and thus that MAY suggestion to parsers only applies in situations (such as APIs, JSON return values) where it is possible to return a freeform value for the "adr" property.
 
[[User:Tantek|Tantek]] 09:20, 2 Aug 2007 (PDT)


== Birthday Reminders ==
== Post vCard 3 additions ==
*hCard consumers could calculate the current age of hCard subjects, from the DoB. [[User:AndyMabbett|Andy Mabbett]] 07:47, 20 Apr 2007 (PDT)
*for hCards with DoB, hCard consumers could generate and export a recurring hCalendar. [[User:AndyMabbett|Andy Mabbett]] 08:06, 20 Apr 2007 (PDT)
**If/ when [[hcard-date-of-death|Date of Death]] is added to hCard, parsers could instead generate a recurring "death-anniversary" hCalendar. [[User:AndyMabbett|Andy Mabbett]] 08:08, 20 Apr 2007 (PDT)


== Post vCard additions ==
'''This subsection is out of date. Many of these suggestions made it into [[vcard4]] and thus [[h-card]].'''


Keeping hCard properties and values as a 1:1 representation of vCard properties and values has numerous benefits such as simplicity, stability, interoperability with the vast number of existing vCard applications etc.
Keeping hCard properties and values as a 1:1 representation of vCard properties and values has numerous benefits such as simplicity, stability, interoperability with the vast number of existing vCard applications etc.
Line 669: Line 321:
* '''vat-number''' : for VAT numbers of companies, which are used a lot in Europe and they need to be published on Belgian publications (including websites).
* '''vat-number''' : for VAT numbers of companies, which are used a lot in Europe and they need to be published on Belgian publications (including websites).


* '''gender'''  
* '''[[gender]]'''  
** See [[vcard-suggestions#Gender]]
** See [[vcard-suggestions#Gender]]


* '''date-of-death'''
* '''date-of-death'''
** See [[hcard-date-of-death]]
** See [[hcard-date-of-death]]
* '''[[relationship-status]]'''
* '''[[interested-in]]'''
* '''[[looking-for]]'''


Thus see (and add to): [[vcard-suggestions]]
Thus see (and add to): [[vcard-suggestions]]
Line 679: Line 335:
Another path to consider is the development of another microformat which includes an hCard and then extends it with additional properties for a particular domain. In many ways [[hresume|hResume]] has already done this. Other related efforts:
Another path to consider is the development of another microformat which includes an hCard and then extends it with additional properties for a particular domain. In many ways [[hresume|hResume]] has already done this. Other related efforts:
* [[genealogy]]
* [[genealogy]]
* [[profile]]
* [[user-profile]]


Using hCard as a stable building block for additional microformats may seem more desirable than incrementally growing hCard itself.
Using hCard as a stable building block for additional microformats may seem more desirable than incrementally growing hCard itself.
Line 705: Line 361:
</nowiki></pre>
</nowiki></pre>
Transforming applications will still find the data and use it when converting hCards to vCards.
Transforming applications will still find the data and use it when converting hCards to vCards.


== Other Implementations/Ideas ==
== Other Implementations/Ideas ==
Line 747: Line 402:
* +1 [[User:DimitriGlazkov|DimitriGlazkov]]
* +1 [[User:DimitriGlazkov|DimitriGlazkov]]


== Implied work tel ==


== Rejected Suggestions ==
=== Problem ===
 
Some phone numbers are not always documented of type 'work'. The type 'work' is usually implied from context.
 
=== Examples in the wild ===
 
[[http://www.nvidia.com/page/contact_information.html NVidia contact information]]
 
Only 'Tel' is specified. The fact that it is of type 'work' can be assumed from the context: the name of an organization is present.
 
<pre>
<P><B>NVIDIA CORPORATE OFFICE:</B> <BR>
          2701 San Tomas Expressway<BR>
          Santa Clara, CA 95050<BR>
          Tel: 408-486-2000<BR>
 
          Fax: 408-486-2200<BR>
          ...
        </P>
</pre>
 
[[http://www.supermarketguru.com/page.cfm/369 Supermarketguru.com]]
 
<pre>
  <p>
      <font face="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial" size=2>
        <b>Phil Lempert:</b> <a href="mailto:plempert@supermarketguru.com">plempert@supermarketguru.com</a><br>
      </font>
      <font face="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size=2>SupermarketGuru.com<br>
          3015 Main Street, Suite 320<BR>Santa Monica, California 90405<br>
          Telephone: 323-860-3070
      </font>
  </p>
</pre>
 
Here only 'Telephone:' is specified, a FN is present ('Phil Lempert') but because an ORG is present ('SupermarketGuru.com'), it can be safely implied that '323-860-3070' is a tel or type work.
 
=== Proposal ===
If an ORG is present in a VCARD, a TEL with no TYPE has an implied TYPE 'work'
 
==== Comments ====
* Though it may be safe to make that assumption for the given example (and though it might have been wise to make this rule from the outset), we now can't know that it will alwyas be safe to do so, for all pre-existing hCards. Consider people whose organisation represents voluntary work, honorary roles and so forth. [[User:AndyMabbett|Andy Mabbett]] 00:33, 8 Jan 2008 (PST)
 
== Peopletagging ==
Just documenting this here so it's written down.  I have been adding class="url" to hcards of people in my blog posts as a way of approximating "people tagging" (like the Facebook "tag people mentioned in this note").


Suggestion: ''The use of class="url" on an <a> tag to represent an hCard URL property is redundant. By virtue of the <a> tag you know this is a URL.''
I used to want to use class="url" rel="tag" in an hCard to do this, but the URL form requirements of rel="tag" do not fit typical profile URLs at all, so I have stopped trying to do things that way.


Rejected.  This is a bad suggestion because although it appears to reduce redunancy and keep things cleaner, it also creates a few problems. Without explicitly noting that this is a URL then any <a> tags within a 'vcard' would be considered a URL, for example:
-- [[User:Singpolyma|Singpolyma]] 23:32, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
<pre><nowiki>
<span class="vcard">
...
<ul class="categories">
<li><a href="http://w3c.org">W3C</a></li>
</ul>
...
</span>
</nowiki></pre>


There is no way to "turn-off" the encoding of the W3C URL, whereas if "url" needed to be explicitly listed in the class attribute list, then by NOT listing it you could effectively turn it off.
== Rejected Suggestions ==
See [[hcard-brainstorming-rejected]].


== References ==
== References ==
=== Normative References ===
 
* [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2426.txt RFC 2426] vCard RFC
* [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2426.txt RFC 2426] vCard RFC
* [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2397 RFC 2397] data URI RFC
* [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2397 RFC 2397] data URI RFC
* [http://gmpg.org/xmdp/ XMDP]
* [http://gmpg.org/xmdp/ XMDP]
=== Informative References ===
* [http://www.imc.org/pdi/ Personal Data Interchange (PDI) at the Internet Mail Consortium]
* [http://www.imc.org/pdi/ Personal Data Interchange (PDI) at the Internet Mail Consortium]
* [http://tantek.com/log/2004/07.html#d27t1049 Markup language design notes]
* [http://tantek.com/log/2004/07.html#d27t1049 Markup language design notes]
Line 778: Line 469:
== Related Pages ==
== Related Pages ==
{{hcard-related-pages}}
{{hcard-related-pages}}
* [[adr-poll]]
= for hCard 1.0.1 =
[[hcard-1-0-1|hCard 1.0.1]] will incorporate some number of hCard brainstorms. Because this is minor bug fix revision (3rd digit), in general no new hCard properties will be added, however bug fixes and [[hcard-issues-resolved|issue resolutions]] involving critical areas such as internationalization and accessibility may introduce additional syntax for existing properties (e.g. <code>value-title</code> from the [[value-class-pattern]]). Some sources of changes for hCard 1.0.1:
* [[hcard-issues-resolved]]
* [[value-class-pattern]] (require parsers to support)
As I evaluate brainstorms listed above, if they make sense to include in hCard 1.0.1, I'll move them here. [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
== deprecate unused properties ==
There are a few properties in hCard that have either received little/no use, or don't make seem to make sense. Thus per the [[simplicity]]/[[minimal-vocabulary]] [[principles]], it makes sense to drop them, or at least in 1.0.1 ''obsolete'' them (outright dropping them in 1.1), to both:
* discourage use by authors (though given the lack of use, it's not clear that authors need any more discouragement)
* encourage implementations to ''ignore'' them, as they would any non-hCard class names.
Properties to deprecate and why:
* <code>class</code> - no [[hcard-examples-in-wild|examples]] in practice, the access classification notions of public/private/confidential don't really make sense outside the context of a specific access protocol/interface (e.g. [[OAuth]].
* <code>mailer</code> - "the type of electronic mail software that is used by the individual" - no [[hcard-examples-in-wild|examples]] in practice, odd to include a preference for just one type of software.
* <code>rev</code> - several reasons:
** There are insufficient examples to really justify keeping this.
** Cognitive name collision with the (now deprecated in HTML5) "rev" attribute.
** Re-use more specific and well-defined "last-modified" property from [[hCalendar]] instead to preserve functionality, thus reducing the overall vocabulary in use.
== only require fn ==
Through the use of several shorthand rules, 'fn' is already effectively the only required property, thus it would be clearer to simply state that and document how fn sometimes can be used to infer 'n'/'nickname' property values.
== root only shorthand syntax ==
This depends on the "only require fn" proposal above.
Per the [[microformats]] [[principle]] [[start-simple]], and as evidenced by many folks [[hcard-faq#Can_you_mix_properties_and_the_root_class_name|asking]] if it is possible to use markup like:
<source lang=html4strict style="background:#fee"><span class="vcard fn">Tantek Çelik</span></source>
it makes sense to introduce an even more minimal root only shorthand syntax (ROSS) that achieves the same goal, e.g.:
<source lang=html4strict style="background:#efe"><span class="vcard">Tantek Çelik</span></source>
It works as follows:
* if an hCard has no explicit properties (only the root class name has been specified/found)
** (or perhaps if an hCard root element has no child elements - this is the case that appears to occur in practice)
* then parse the contents of the root hCard element as text and use that text to imply the 'fn' property, the only required hCard property.
** all [[hcard-parsing]] special element handling still applies, e.g. if the root element is an <code>abbr</code>, use the 'title' attribute, if the root element is an <code>img</code>, use the 'alt' attribute.
* additionally, the root element is one of the following, then the respective additional property is implied as well:
** <code>&lt;a href="http://example.com"&gt;</code> - set the 'url' property to the 'href' attribute
** <code>&lt;img src="http://example.com/p.jpg"&gt;</code> - set the 'photo' property to the 'src' attribute
** <code>&lt;object data="http://example.com/p"&gt;</code>
*** if the 'type' attribute is a MIME type starting with "image/", then set the 'photo' property to the 'data' attribute
*** if the 'type' attribute is a MIME type starting with "audio/", then set the 'sound' property to the 'data' attribute
Issues:
* could only be used for "people" hCards, since no "org", nor any location properties would be implied.
This notion of root only shorthand syntax (ROSS), could (and probably should) be generalized to all [[compound-microformats]]. Of course it will require that all [[compound-microformats]] has only one required property (all others being optional), thats value is then implied by the content of the root only syntax. Thus:
* add to [[hcalendar-brainstorming]]: [[hcalendar-1-0-1|hCalendar 1.0.1]] should only require "summary"
* add to [[hreview-brainstorming]]: [[hreview-0-4|hReview 0.4]] should only require "item", which itself should only require "fn", and those both should be implied by the root-only shorthand syntax.
* add to [[hatom-brainstorming]]: [[hatom-0-2|hAtom 0.2]] perhaps should not require any properties, and for the ROSS case, should imply the value of the "entry-content" property.
In addition, all compound properties of a microformat should have zero or one required subproperties, and similar to ROSS, should imply their required (or primary optional if none are required) subproperty accordingly. E.g.
* "adr" should/could imply "extended-address"
* "geo" could imply "latitude" from the first decimal number in its text value, and if it is followed by non-numerical content (e.g. a "," or ";" or " " or " longitude:"), "longitude" from the first decimal number that followed that chunk of non-numerical content.
== Named locations ==
Most hCards contain contact information for people or organizations. But locations that aren't organizations are also deserving of their own hCard (e.g. somebody's house/apartment). This situation can be represented by combining "fn" and "extended-address".
=== "fn" and "extended-address" combination ===
'''Proposal''': Similar to [[hcard#Organization_Contact_Info|organization contact info]], if the "fn" property and an "extended-address" property have the exact same value (typically because they are set on the same element, e.g. <code>class="fn extended-address"</code>), then
# The hCard represents contact information for a place and SHOULD be treated as such.
# The author also MUST NOT set the "N" property, or set it (and any sub-properties) explicitly to the empty string "".
# Parsers SHOULD handle the missing "n" property by implying empty values for all the "n" sub-properties.
'''Further proposal''': Consider also an hCard for a City, "Birmingham, England": Birmingham may be the "fn" and the "locality", but it's not an "extended-address". Perhaps the rule should be that the hCard is for a place if the "fn" is on any address component (e.g "fn&nbsp;locality" or "fn&nbsp;street-address")?
'''For further consideration''': One real problem right now is that we provide a field for our users to enter a 'Location' on our [http://timespeople.nytimes.com/view/user/9354457/1/index.html User Pages]. In real life this has ranged from '8th floor', 'New York', 'Company Name', My Desk', 'http://some.site.com' - the majority being generalized geographic city or state names. Right now there is no property to properly handle this, but this one appears to come close. If this cannot be used for such purposes I would ask that this be looked into further as I don't think its a unique problem.
* Have you considered using <code>label</code> instead of <code>adr</code>?
=== Examples in the wild ===
* The named location "Picnic benches" in the address "Picnic benches, South Park, San Francisco, California" in [http://adactio.com/journal/1364/ a blog post on adactio.com].
<pre><nowiki>
<span class="vcard">
<span class="adr">
  <span class="fn extended-address">Picnic benches</span>
  <span class="street-address">South Park</span>
  <span class="locality">San Francisco</span>
  <span class="region">California</span>
</span>
</span>
</nowiki></pre>
==== Potential examples in the wild ====
* The location "Phone Boxes by the Sealife Centre" [http://upcoming.yahoo.com/venue/5668/ on Upcoming] is currently marked up as "fn org":
<pre><nowiki>
<div class="vcard">
<div class="fn org">Phone Boxes by the Sealife Centre</div>
  <div class="adr">
  <span class="street-address">Marine Parade</span><br />
  <span class="locality">Brighton &amp; Hove</span>,
  <span class="region">England</span>
  <span class="postal-code">BN2 1TB</span><br />
  <span class="country">United Kingdom</span><br />
  <span class="tel">01273 606674</span>
  </div>
<div class="note">Just a meeting place, in case the venue changes.</div>
</div>
</nowiki></pre>
This could be marked up as:
<pre><nowiki>
<div class="vcard">
<div class="adr">
  <div class="fn extended-address">Phone Boxes by the Sealife Centre</div>
  <span class="street-address">Marine Parade</span><br />
  <span class="locality">Brighton &amp; Hove</span>,
  <span class="region">England</span>
  <span class="postal-code">BN2 1TB</span><br />
  <span class="country">United Kingdom</span><br />
  <span class="tel">01273 606674</span>
  </div>
<div class="note">Just a meeting place, in case the venue changes.</div>
</div>
</nowiki></pre>
===Concerns===
The above seems to be an elegant solution, but a wider variety of examples form published pages are needed, to be sure it meets all common scenarios. these should include cases where "adr" is not already used; note that in that case an extra level of nesting is required. The implications of this, for hCards already published, should be considered.
Also, what about hCards for published locations, which already include an extended address?
e.g.
<pre><nowiki>
<div class="vcard">
  <span class="fn org">Powell's Pool</span>
  <span class="adr">
    <span class="extended-address">Sutton Park</span>
    <span class="locality">Birmingham</span>
    <span class="country-name">England</span>
  </span>
</div>
</nowiki></pre>
[[User:AndyMabbett|Andy Mabbett]] 05:40, 15 Dec 2007 (PST)
===Revised proposal===
*See revised proposal at [http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2007-December/011169.html microformats-discuss/2007-December/011169.html]
** [http://buzzword.org.uk/cognition/ Cognition] supports this.
=== named location formats ===
Previous named location format efforts:
==== Simple GeoRSS featurename ====
The [http://georss.org/simple Simple GeoRSS] vocabulary contains the following named location example in the "Additional Properties" section that references a <strong><code>featurename</code></strong> tag.
<blockquote><h3>Feature Type, Feature Name, and Relationship Tags</h3><p>The Feature Type, Feature Name, and Relationship tags are specified as GeoRSS elements.</p><pre><nowiki>
    &lt;georss:point&gt;45.256 -110.45&lt;/georss:point&gt;
    &lt;georss:featuretypetag&gt;city&lt;/georss:featuretypetag&gt;
    &lt;georss:relationshiptag&gt;is-centered-at&lt;/georss:relationshiptag&gt;
    &lt;georss:featurename&gt;Podunk&lt;/georss:featurename&gt;
</nowiki></pre></blockquote>
A [http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ageorss.org%20featurename search for featurename on georss.org] fails to find any other references however, including a definition.
An [http://lists.eogeo.org/pipermail/georss/2006-December/000895.html email on the georss list from Dec 2006] thread "featurename, other missing bits from the site" notes that "there is some updating to do" in response to a concern that "that descriptions of "featurename" are not present on GeoRSS Simple and the GeoRSS Model. GeoRSS GML makes no mention of the non-geometric properties at all."
== FN Nickname semantic ==
There are many sites (e.g. [http://flickr.com Flickr], [http://consumating.com/ Consumating]) which permit the user to '''both''' have a multi-word login/handle/alias, '''and''' not show their ''real'' name (fn, n, given-name, family-name etc.).
For the people represented by the profile pages of these sites, the best we can do is mark-up their login/handle/alias as their "nickname". Originally, we had thought that such handles etc. were single words only, and thus we created the [[hcard#Implied_.22nickname.22_Optimization|Implied nickname optimization]] accordingly, where you can markup the handle as an "fn", and have it automatically set a "nickname" property value, and empty values for all the "n" sub-values.
In order to deal with multi-word handles, similar to the [[hcard#Organization_Contact_Info|hCard Organization contact info]] method, the following is proposed:
=== "fn" and "nickname" combination ===
Due to the use of potentially multi-word nicknames/handles/usernames in content published on the Web, (e.g. on sites like [http://flickr.com Flickr] and [http://consumating.com/ Consumating]), hCard has a mechanism for specifying a multi-word "fn" that is also a "nickname" without affecting any "n" sub-properties that are otherwise specified, and explicitly implying empty defaults for "n" sub-properties.
Similar to the [[hcard#Implied_.22nickname.22_Optimization|implied "nickname" optimization]], if the "fn" property and a "nickname" property have the exact same value (typically because they are set on the same element, e.g. <code>class="fn nickname"</code>), then
# The content of the "fn" is treated as a "nickname" property value.
# Parsers should handle the missing "n" property by implying empty values for all the "n" sub-properties.
== Implied FN from N ==
Since the "n" property is more detailed and structured than the "fn" property, and [[hcard-examples-in-wild]] have shown that very often what is specified for "n" sub-properties is also specified for the "fn" property, we could add the following implied "fn" optimization which would permit sites to only use "n" and its subproperties.
In addition, some sites don't have contiguous uninterrupted text that represents the desired "fn" value, and would much rather have the "fn" implied from "n" subproperties.  E.g. "Citizen Space Citizens" on [[hcard-examples-in-wild]].
=== implied "fn" from "n" optimization ===
If an hCard has no "fn", yet has an "n" property with one or more subproperties, then the "fn" property value can be implied by concatenating the "n" subproperty values as follows, with a space between each subproperty value, and multiple subproperty instances.
* 'honorific-prefix'es (as found in document order)
* 'given-name'
* 'additional-name's (as found in document order)
* 'family-name'
* 'honorific-suffix'es (as found in document order)
== Implied N from its subproperties ==
Since the "n" subproperties are sufficiently uniquely named (that is, they are not used by any other hCard property), and "n" is one of the [[hcard-singular-properties]], it is possible to consider leaving out the "n" property itself fo the hCard, and simply directlly using the subproperties, as properties of the hCard.
* [http://buzzword.org.uk/cognition/ Cognition] has supported this for ages.
=== implied "n" from its subproperties ===
If an hCard has no "fn" nor "n" properties, then the entire scope of the hCard is considered to be inside an implied "n" property. 
E.g. this markup:
<pre><nowiki>
<span class="vcard">
<span class="given-name">Tantek</span>
<span class="family-name">Çelik</span>
</span>
</nowiki></pre>
would be treated from a parsing perspective as:
<pre><nowiki>
<span class="vcard"><span class="n">
<span class="given-name">Tantek</span>
<span class="family-name">Çelik</span>
</span></span>
</nowiki></pre>
Which, with the '''implied "fn" from "n" optimization''' above, would then be effectively treated as:
<pre><nowiki>
<span class="vcard"><span class="fn n">
<span class="given-name">Tantek</span>
<span class="family-name">Çelik</span>
</span></span>
</nowiki></pre>
<div class="discussion">
* a related request from the mailing list: http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2007-September/010791.html
* from the [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4106#reviews Firefox Operator reviews], by Anthony Watson on July 30, 2009, a comment in apparent support of implying n from n sub-properties and fn from n as well:
** "If I don't set an fn class, but only use the given-name and family name classes, the Operator toolbar doesn't light up. fn should be optional, otherwise I'm forced to hide the redundant element(s)."
</div>
== Examples ==
* See [[hcard-examples]], which provides several illustrative instructive examples, as well as 1:1 hCard examples for each example in [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2426.txt RFC 2426].
=== Using RFC2806 with hCard ===
[http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2806.txt RFC 2806] defines the telephone scheme "tel:", "fax:" and "modem:" to handle phone communications with URIs in the same way, "mailto:" is defined for email. It's part of the list or registered schemes by IANA : [http://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) SCHEMES]
<pre><nowiki>
tel  telephone [RFC2806]
fax  fax      [RFC2806]
modem modem    [RFC2806]
</nowiki></pre>
It is practical to write your tel number like this.
<pre><nowiki>
<a class="tel"      href="tel:+1-919-555-7878">+1-919-555-7878</a>
</nowiki></pre>
or even
<pre><nowiki>
<a class="tel"      href="tel:+1-919-555-7878">Mr Smith's phone</a>
</nowiki></pre>
You can add support for "tel:" to your desktop and to your browser
* For Gnome, edit ~/.gnome/Gnome and add something to the URL Handlers section. (Dan Connolly uses this to get galeon to launch telnum from [http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/2001/telagent/ telagent sources] for tel URIs)
* In Mozilla, [http://dizzy.mozdev.org/ Dizzy]
* In Internet Explorer, [http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/networking/pluggable/overview/overview.asp Asynchronous Pluggable Protocols]
On the CSS front… You could for example add automagically an icon. I have put the property !important for those who wants to add it to their own stylesheet in their browsers, so they know type of links when browsing.
<pre><nowiki>
a[href^="tel:"]:before {
    content: '\260f  ' !important;
    padding-left: 20px !important; }
a[href^="mailto:"]:before {
    content: '\2709  ' !important;
    padding-left: 20px !important; }
</nowiki></pre>
= for hCard 1.1 =
[[hcard-1-1|hCard 1.1]] will incorporate all fixes going into hCard 1.0.1, and in addition, as a minor feature revision, will incorporate changes and a few new properties based on:
* [[hcard-1-0-1]]
* existing research and [[hcard-issues-resolved|resolved issues]]
* [[vcard-suggestions]]
* vCard 4.0 proposed standard - properties that represent existing content in the wild
* potentially other widely used characteristics from sites using hCard (e.g. Wikipedia infobox and other templates).
hCard 1.1 will likely be one of a few predefined vocabularies as part of the [[microformats-2]] work and only defined within the microformats-2 syntax.
As I evaluate brainstorms listed below, if they make sense to include in hCard 1.1, I'll move them here. [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
== languages spoken ==
Consider [[languages-spoken]] as a possible addition based on examples gathered.
== coverage area ==
Consider [[coverage-area-examples]] as a possible addition based on examples gathered.
= just brainstorming =
The following brainstorming suggestions are interesting ideas for how to use or improve hCard but are theoretical (no real world examples found yet), or have insufficient real world examples to be deserving of explicit inclusion in the specification.
== named phone numbers ==
hCard is already specified for use for:
* people
* organizations
* named locations
Numerous examples of all of these can be found on the web.
Another possible addition is a named telephone numbers. So far the examples are fairly limited:
* W3C [http://www.w3.org/1998/12/bridge/Zakim.html Zakim  Teleconference Bridge] (note also [http://www.w3.org/2002/01/UsingZakim Using Zakim] instructions)
* ...
In this case, Zakim, for example, has a name, a telephone number, and a URL for "status".
It also makes sense as something that might be in your address book, and therefore have a [[vCard]] serialization.
So it ''might'' make sense to have an hCard for Zakim which contained the information that you might want added to your address book about it.
Another way to achieve this would be with perhaps a new/different "tel" microformat extracted from hCard, perhaps even a named "tel" microformat (e.g. with root class name "vtel", properties "fn", "tel", "url" based on the above example.).
= for hCard 2 =
== done ==
* [[hcard-implied]] - has been incorporated and generalized for all microformats

Latest revision as of 16:25, 18 July 2020

This page is for brainstorming about various uses and details of hCard. This page contains proposals. For the current state please see hCard.

Brainstorm proposals that illustrate how to use the existing hCard spec will likely be incorporated into existing hCard documentation such as:

Proposals that are minor bug fixes or enhancements may be incorporated into hCard 1.0.1. See the for hCard 1.0.1 section below.

Proposals that are more substantial enhancements such as new hCard properties may be incorporated into hCard 1.1. See the for hCard 1.1 section below.

Editors

Problems Being Solved

Some of the problems that hCard helps to solve:


Encoding "modern" attributes

Since vCard was first established, various interactive communication technologies and addressing schemes have been widely adopted. Although there aren't specific properties for these technologies / addressing schemes, they can be captured as URLs or email addresses.

This has now been written up for the most part. See:

http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard-examples#New_Types_of_Contact_Info

Still to be addressed:

  • iChat mac.com addresses, simply store "@mac.com" email addresses, e.g.
    • <a class="email" href="mailto:steve@mac.com">...
  • MSN Instant Messenger, you can simple store "@hotmail.com" or "@msn.com" or "@passport.com" email addresses.
  • Internet Relay Chat (IRC), use "irc:" URLs.

A suggestion relating to the rise of VoIP protocol (Skype, etc):

Should these protocols be marked up using the <span type="tel">. It seems logical that a means to communicate with another via voice should be marked up as a telephone address, rather than the currently suggested URL property.

Auto-Discovery

See hcard-brainstorming-autodiscovery

geo improvements

See geo-brainstorming

how to use with HTML5

Per Theresa O'Connor's email to public-html: Add a section in hCard describing how to use hCard in HTML5, including optional use of HTML5's <time> element and microdata feature. Encourage HTML5 to drop the "vcard" predefined microdata vocabulary and reference an updated hCard spec instead. Tantek

Other use cases

Please add your suggestions!

hCard microformats could be used to:

  • Calculate and display the subject's age "as of today".
  • Calculate and display the subject's age at death (if a Date of Death is available)
  • Generate a recurring iCal for a living subject's birthday
  • Generate a recurring iCal for a dead subject's "anniversary of birth" (if a Date of Death is available)
  • ...

Issues with vCard Applications

See vcard-implementations.

Open Questions

Q: since many of the components would be using CSS classes for encoding data, it is possible to MIX two different profiles. (e.g. hCard and XFN) There are no real constraints on where/how to enforce class names, these are based on the html profile, since it is difficult to associate the text within the attribute to a specific profile.

...
<a href="mailto:joe.smith@example.com" class="fn" rel="met">Joe Smith</a>
...

-- Brian Suda

Q: Preserving White space? Should the transforming applications preserve extra white space characters? For example:

<a href="http://mywebsite.com/" class="fn n">
    <span class="given-name">John</span>
    <span class="other-names">Q.</span>
    <span class="family-name">Public</span>
</a>

When transformed into a vCard, the N property will pick apart the span tags and create the value for N correctly seperated by colons. The FN property will take a string and simply display it. There are two possible renderings for FN:

John Q. Public

    John
    Q.
    Public

Either the white-space is preserved or it is not. Which should the transforming applications render?

-- Brian Suda

A: The parsing application should follow the white space collapsing rules of the mime type it retrieves. I.e. if it retrieves a "text/html" document, it should do HTML white space collapsing.

-- Tantek

Many of the Questions and Answers are relevant to both ["hCal"] and hCard.

Q: Would it be appropriate to wrap the name of the vCard owner with ? This may give the hCard some added semantic value in the XHTML document.

<span class="agent"> 
 <span class="vcard">
  <span class="email">
   <a class="internet" href="mailto:jfriday@host.com">
    <dfn>
       <span class="fn">Joe Friday</span>
    </dfn>
   </a>
  </span>
  <span class="tel">+1-919-555-7878</span>
  <span class="title">Area Administrator, Assistant</span>
 </span>
</span>

-- Ben Ward

  • If the answer to the above Q is "yes", why not use the following?
<dfn class="fn">Joe Friday</dfn>

or

<span class="agent"> 
 <dfn class="vcard">
  <span class="email">
   <a class="internet" href="mailto:jfriday@host.com">
    <span class="fn">Joe Friday</span>
   </a>
  </span>
  <span class="tel">+1-919-555-7878</span>
  <span class="title">Area Administrator, Assistant</span>
 </dfn>
</span>

This would mark the entire hcard as the "defining instance".

Bob Jonkman 10:07, 13 Jul 2007 (PDT)

Applications

Applications that are hCard aware or can convert hCard to vCard formats.

Copy hCards favelet(s)

  • I think a Favelet would work nicely here. When you find a page that is hCard friendly, you click the favlet and you get yourself a vCard. This is done! See X2V in the implementations section of the hCard spec.

Distributed Commentor Icons

The URL reffered to in this section is no longer available. The thoughts on using icons are however still relevant. WilleRaab 16:55, 23 Jul 2007 (PDT)

  • See using hCards in your blog for an example of hCards used for comment authors (commentors). The system used there, "Gravatars", is a centralized site that serves commentor icons that requires login etc.

What if we gave each commentor the option of hosting their own icon?

A distributed commentor icon implementation could work like this:

  1. Given the URL of a commentor, look for an <address> element with classname of "vcard" at the commentor's URL. The <address> element is supposed to be the contact information for the page (see hCard FAQ for more info), so this makes sense.
  2. Next, look for the first element inside that hcard that has a classname of "logo".
  3. Hopefully that element is an <img>, and if so, use its src to get the commentor's icon.
  4. Presto. You've got distributed commentor icons!

Spam prevention

hCard uses mailto: links, and therefore it automatically "inherits" the disadvantage of mailto: links: These links can be easily detected by emails spiders (used by spammers).

Email addresses are picked up like any other link crawled by a search engine and trustworthy crawlers may be deterred from adding emphasis while indexing these links by including rel="nofollow" (See rel-nofollow). However, email addresses used for spam are crawled by email spiders which will likely ignore this attribute.

There are ways to prevent email address detection by simple email spiders, while still retaining full compatibility with (X)HTML applications. One common way is to "encode" the the "m" of "mail" and "@" with character entities, yet it's unwise to follow a convention of only encoding specific characters because the email spiders can pick up on this too:

Example of the original link:

<a class="email" href="mailto:john.smith@example.com">john.smith@example.com</a> 

Example of the "encoded" link (with rel-nofollow added):

<a class="e&#109;ail" rel="nofollow" href="&#109;ailto:john.smith&#064;example.com">john.smith&#064;example.com</a>

Simple email spiders which do not do character entity decoding will therefore not be able to find your email address.

Note: Perhaps there are or will be email spiders which can decode entities, so the this technique will only help with some (cheap) email spiders. (See also: http://rbach.priv.at/Misc/2005/EmailSpiderTest)

Other prevention methods to consider

  • Using server-side code to implement character entities randomly
  • Displaying the address in a way thought to be only human readable (thus breaking the link):
    • Using an image instead of text (could still be machine readable using OCR)
    • Using human readable text that conveys the need for editing before use (eg PLEASE-NO-SPAM_name@example_NO-SPAM.com)
  • Using javascript for client-side decryption of an encrypted address (requires javascript to be enabled)
  • Pointing to an email form or other URL instead of an email address

Tutorials

  • How to hCard encode entries in Popular blog software.
  • Good reasons to publish your hCard
    • as a business, get people to put you in their address book so they'll find you later
    • as a business with an email list, get people to add you (with email address) to their address book so that your email list works via whitelisting via the address book.

Parsing

See hcard-parsing-brainstorming

Birthday Reminders

  • hCard consumers could calculate the current age of hCard subjects, from the DoB. Andy Mabbett 07:47, 20 Apr 2007 (PDT)
  • for hCards with DoB, hCard consumers could generate and export a recurring hCalendar. Andy Mabbett 08:06, 20 Apr 2007 (PDT)
    • If/ when Date of Death is added to hCard, parsers could instead generate a recurring "death-anniversary" hCalendar. Andy Mabbett 08:08, 20 Apr 2007 (PDT)

key property for webid

vCard has a 'key' property which has seen little use on real world web pages as part of hCard.

However, there are plenty of easily findable real world examples of people publishing their public keys in visible text on web pages, and thus it's reasonable to include (keep) the 'key' property to mark those up.

What's missing is a recommended processing model and/or user flow for making use of such publicly published public keys in the 'key' property of hCard.

One possible such processing model and user flow is that described by the [W3C WebID effort].

It seems at least theoretically possible to use the vCard/hCard 'key' property to represent the necessary information in a profile for webid functionality.[1]

In particular, perhaps the upcoming digest (di) URI scheme may also help with this:

di: (DIGEST) URI scheme exploitation

Example of an hCard snippet with di: scheme URI handled where "fingerprint" holds the hash of your local x.509 certificate:

<a class="fingerprint" href="di:md5;nXVtqM9r5r6yncqI4muYDQ?hashtag=webid&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fid.myopenlink.net%2Fc%2FBNP43U">Fingerprint</a>

Complete Example

   <a class="url fn" href="http://linkeddata.uriburner.com/about/id/http/idehen.me/2012/01/27/identity-verification-via-blog-post/">kingsley Uyi Idehen (ProxyURI DI scheme Post2)</a>
   <a class="email" href="mailto:kidehen@openlinksw.com">kidehen@openlinksw.com</a>
   <a class="key" href="data:application/x-x509-user-cert;base64,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">Public Key</a>
   <a class="fingerprint" href="di:md5;nXVtqM9r5r6yncqI4muYDQ?hashtag=webid&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fid.myopenlink.net%2Fc%2FBNP43U">Fingerprint</a>


hCard and WebID

Next steps are to post sample hCards that attempt to represent required webid information:


BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----

MIIEczCCA9ygAwIBAgICAQIwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQENBQAwdjELMAkGA1UEBhMCVVMx FjAUBgNVBAgTDU1hc3NhY2h1c2V0dHMxEzARBgNVBAcUCkJ1cmxpbmd0b24xHjAc BgNVBAoUFU9wZW5saW5rIFNvZnR3YXJlIEluYzEaMBgGA1UEAxQRaWQubXlvcGVu bGluay5uZXQwHhcNMTIwMTE4MTk0MjA3WhcNMTMwMTE3MTk0MjA3WjBlMR4wHAYD VQQDFBVAa2lkZWhlbiAoQnJvd2VySUQgMikxHDAaBgNVBAoTE1BlcnNvbmFsIERh dGEgU3BhY2UxJTAjBgkqhkiG9w0BCQEWFmtpZGVoZW5Ab3Blbmxpbmtzdy5jb20w ggEiMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4IBDwAwggEKAoIBAQDICiEcwzeVRFJNTxlEDrJp dBxtMH/y9LVYQGn3qnAP8RpEthW0rrdQg8q8hlMz2zKMwqp5ko/2h0gOLogYRk+p Q6Ws0afEZaqhC+cA6uXpvkw7BVhk6SXAbIYgZr2u0zdPk1k85iHOOvXPnTOqetDJ Mwk1hnKVKbJ7K4nS9aUek6nuICJ2FMSaV3HNCIjooJx5qnNquksRuSGp1sua+u0s qCtTSJNNZsvpxMEJS3pFvQ49i2J89K5xctAsP4w7xTbC6L5eaDNEnW1ap9/mgmDZ xTxRUxW4uaY8WZIRXmjPEJVszYnpbdXESgtZ4DCr8w8JY6iwVVI8mrfBmtRKDmFp AgMBAAGjggGbMIIBlzAdBgNVHQ4EFgQU2O63RnUaQVLD3cu3xGPUUfsdbbwwcQYD VR0RBGowaIZOaHR0cDovL2lkLm15b3BlbmxpbmsubmV0L212L2RhdGEvYWZhY2Y2 Yjg2OGU2Y2IzNmY3MWQyY2VjYzZkNTMxYTI2Y2UxZjJlZiN0aGlzgRZraWRlaGVu QG9wZW5saW5rc3cuY29tMC0GCWCGSAGG+EIBDQQgFh5WaXJ0dW9zbyBHZW5lcmF0 ZWQgQ2VydGlmaWNhdGUwgaEGA1UdIwSBmTCBloAU2O63RnUaQVLD3cu3xGPUUfsd bbyheqR4MHYxCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVTMRYwFAYDVQQIEw1NYXNzYWNodXNldHRzMRMw EQYDVQQHFApCdXJsaW5ndG9uMR4wHAYDVQQKFBVPcGVubGluayBTb2Z0d2FyZSBJ bmMxGjAYBgNVBAMUEWlkLm15b3BlbmxpbmsubmV0ggIBAjAgBgNVHSUBAf8EFjAU BggrBgEFBQcDAgYIKwYBBQUHAwQwDgYDVR0PAQH/BAQDAgWgMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEB DQUAA4GBAKnEpLrpS49OV2lLXjMzsZcWH7SWLmt1tPMD8bB0rC7Dh12Z3rpJ/+jq GMJarWEppj9/dEQq16Hrb6GqelCgo2Xw9B/bu52q16bT1vOOfl6trcKrUcWeiM+0 7JJjyWxUulEAnmtpH/NPX0x/37Yg5KpnQMs3F/h1IIl105H5cR5H


END CERTIFICATE-----


   <a class="url fn" href="http://id.myopenlink.net/mv/data/afacf6b868e6cb36f71d2cecc6d531a26ce1f2ef#this">@kidehen (BrowerID 2)</a>
   <a class="email" href="mailto:kidehen@openlinksw.com">kidehen@openlinksw.com</a>
   <a class="key" href="data:application/x-x509-user-cert;base64,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">Public Key</a>
   <a class="key" href="http://id.myopenlink.net/certgen/cert/213">Public Key Ref</a>

This exploration could help document how the hCard 'key' property should be used, and perhaps even written up at least as examples/suggestions in the hCard spec itself.

TODO: we need an hCard field for holding a crypto hash (e.g., SHA1 or MD5) of an x.509 certificate. There's already data: scheme URI in place for this purpose.

Usage Scenario Examples

Exposing Your WebID

Use a blog post (like this) to publicize information that serves as a declaration of identity verifiable by me, using the WebID protocol. Once in place, structured data middleware can then ingest the blog post and produce a Linked Data resource that's available in a variety of formats that includes: HTML (like this), and many others (just look at footer section of the sample HTML page).

Using hCard to facilitate WebID verification

Actually used hCard embedded in a blog post to create a resource that's looked up by a WebID verifier. Basically, the verifier is following the URL from the subjectAlternativeName (SAN) extension in an x.509 certificate to an HTML resource that contains embedded hCard.

Examples:

Post vCard 3 additions

This subsection is out of date. Many of these suggestions made it into vcard4 and thus h-card.

Keeping hCard properties and values as a 1:1 representation of vCard properties and values has numerous benefits such as simplicity, stability, interoperability with the vast number of existing vCard applications etc.

However some have found vCard to be limiting in terms of the data/properties/fields they want to express in contact information. Some implementations use vCard extensions to express such information [citation needed].

This section is for documentation of such suggested additions. Empirical evidence of actual *real world* examples on the Web of people publishing this information would be a good step towards considering any such additions/extensions.

  • altitude. From hcard-issues.
  • vat-number : for VAT numbers of companies, which are used a lot in Europe and they need to be published on Belgian publications (including websites).

Thus see (and add to): vcard-suggestions

Another path to consider is the development of another microformat which includes an hCard and then extends it with additional properties for a particular domain. In many ways hResume has already done this. Other related efforts:

Using hCard as a stable building block for additional microformats may seem more desirable than incrementally growing hCard itself.

Of course if vCard were extended itself, that may provide impetus to add such extensions to hCard in order to maintain the 1:1 representation of properties/values.

Wikipedia's Persondata

Wikipedia's Persondata aligns very closely with hCard, but has additional date and place of birth & death fields. Andy Mabbett 13:02, 28 Jan 2007 (PST)

TODO

  • The hcard-profile needs verification and perhaps a URL for retrieving the actual XMDP, rather than as <pre> text on a wiki page.
  • Complete translating the examples from the vCard spec into hCard, and place them on a separate hCard examples page.
  • Create a "rich" but realistic hCard example, say for example for a salesperson, who wants to put a whole bunch of contact information on their website in order to be found/contacted easily.
  • Provide examples of how to encode instant messaging (IM) accounts. Figure out what would the mailto: or aim: URL in hCard look like in vCard. And take a look at what vCard applications do today with IM addresses.
  • Clarify contradictory copyright statements, per http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2007-July/010243.html

CSS Styles

Not only can you create semantics with the hCard values, but you can add CSS styles to them as well. You are free to style the terms in any way you want, but here we can list a few ideas for how to style terms.

If you want to encode hCard data, but do NOT want to display it in the HTML code (WARNING: This is very much recommended AGAINST, and in general against the microformat principle of marking up visible data), then you can hide that tag in CSS with the following code:

<span style="display: none">Hidden Data</span>

Transforming applications will still find the data and use it when converting hCards to vCards.

Other Implementations/Ideas

Accepted Suggestions

Encoding Company data as a Business Card (proposal)

( Accepted: http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard#Organization_Contact_Info )

In the wild there are several hCards that do not currently validate because they are businesses that have omitted the "fn" property in favor of the "org" property.

Proposal: hCards representing a business or organization MUST set fn AND org to the same value. Parsers may then use this equivalence, if detected, to treat an hCard as the contact info for a business or organization rather than an individual.

Note that Apple Address Book supports this semantic when importing vCards.

See the Technorati Contact Info for an example.

Implied "FN and N" Optimization (proposal)

Right now a parser first looks for an "n" element.

And then if no "n" is present, look for an "fn" element to use to imply an "n" element per the "implied n property" rules in the spec.

BACKGROUND:

Due to the prevalence of the use of "nicknames" or "handles" on the Web, in actual content published on the Web (e.g. authors of reviews), there has been a discussion about adding a "fn" shortcut to the "n" shortcut that used the "nickname" as a fallback.

PROPOSAL:

We should consider adding one more implied optimization after the steps documented above and that is:

If no "fn" is present either, then look for a "nickname" element to use to imply both the "fn", and the "n/given-name", leaving the "n/family-name" as empty.

This would enable "nickname" only hCards for denoting and individual on a website, which is quite common on blogs and reviews published on the Web.

Implied work tel

Problem

Some phone numbers are not always documented of type 'work'. The type 'work' is usually implied from context.

Examples in the wild

[NVidia contact information]

Only 'Tel' is specified. The fact that it is of type 'work' can be assumed from the context: the name of an organization is present.

<P><B>NVIDIA CORPORATE OFFICE:</B> <BR>
          2701 San Tomas Expressway<BR>
          Santa Clara, CA 95050<BR>
          Tel: 408-486-2000<BR>

          Fax: 408-486-2200<BR>
          ...
        </P>

[Supermarketguru.com]

   <p>
      <font face="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial" size=2>
        <b>Phil Lempert:</b> <a href="mailto:plempert@supermarketguru.com">plempert@supermarketguru.com</a><br>
      </font>
      <font face="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size=2>SupermarketGuru.com<br>
          3015 Main Street, Suite 320<BR>Santa Monica, California 90405<br>
          Telephone: 323-860-3070 
      </font>
   </p>

Here only 'Telephone:' is specified, a FN is present ('Phil Lempert') but because an ORG is present ('SupermarketGuru.com'), it can be safely implied that '323-860-3070' is a tel or type work.

Proposal

If an ORG is present in a VCARD, a TEL with no TYPE has an implied TYPE 'work'

Comments

  • Though it may be safe to make that assumption for the given example (and though it might have been wise to make this rule from the outset), we now can't know that it will alwyas be safe to do so, for all pre-existing hCards. Consider people whose organisation represents voluntary work, honorary roles and so forth. Andy Mabbett 00:33, 8 Jan 2008 (PST)

Peopletagging

Just documenting this here so it's written down. I have been adding class="url" to hcards of people in my blog posts as a way of approximating "people tagging" (like the Facebook "tag people mentioned in this note").

I used to want to use class="url" rel="tag" in an hCard to do this, but the URL form requirements of rel="tag" do not fit typical profile URLs at all, so I have stopped trying to do things that way.

-- Singpolyma 23:32, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Rejected Suggestions

See hcard-brainstorming-rejected.

References

Related Pages

The hCard specification is a work in progress. As additional aspects are discussed, understood, and written, they will be added. These thoughts, issues, and questions are kept in separate pages.


for hCard 1.0.1

hCard 1.0.1 will incorporate some number of hCard brainstorms. Because this is minor bug fix revision (3rd digit), in general no new hCard properties will be added, however bug fixes and issue resolutions involving critical areas such as internationalization and accessibility may introduce additional syntax for existing properties (e.g. value-title from the value-class-pattern). Some sources of changes for hCard 1.0.1:

As I evaluate brainstorms listed above, if they make sense to include in hCard 1.0.1, I'll move them here. Tantek

deprecate unused properties

There are a few properties in hCard that have either received little/no use, or don't make seem to make sense. Thus per the simplicity/minimal-vocabulary principles, it makes sense to drop them, or at least in 1.0.1 obsolete them (outright dropping them in 1.1), to both:

  • discourage use by authors (though given the lack of use, it's not clear that authors need any more discouragement)
  • encourage implementations to ignore them, as they would any non-hCard class names.

Properties to deprecate and why:

  • class - no examples in practice, the access classification notions of public/private/confidential don't really make sense outside the context of a specific access protocol/interface (e.g. OAuth.
  • mailer - "the type of electronic mail software that is used by the individual" - no examples in practice, odd to include a preference for just one type of software.
  • rev - several reasons:
    • There are insufficient examples to really justify keeping this.
    • Cognitive name collision with the (now deprecated in HTML5) "rev" attribute.
    • Re-use more specific and well-defined "last-modified" property from hCalendar instead to preserve functionality, thus reducing the overall vocabulary in use.

only require fn

Through the use of several shorthand rules, 'fn' is already effectively the only required property, thus it would be clearer to simply state that and document how fn sometimes can be used to infer 'n'/'nickname' property values.

root only shorthand syntax

This depends on the "only require fn" proposal above.

Per the microformats principle start-simple, and as evidenced by many folks asking if it is possible to use markup like:

<span class="vcard fn">Tantek Çelik</span>

it makes sense to introduce an even more minimal root only shorthand syntax (ROSS) that achieves the same goal, e.g.:

<span class="vcard">Tantek Çelik</span>

It works as follows:

  • if an hCard has no explicit properties (only the root class name has been specified/found)
    • (or perhaps if an hCard root element has no child elements - this is the case that appears to occur in practice)
  • then parse the contents of the root hCard element as text and use that text to imply the 'fn' property, the only required hCard property.
    • all hcard-parsing special element handling still applies, e.g. if the root element is an abbr, use the 'title' attribute, if the root element is an img, use the 'alt' attribute.
  • additionally, the root element is one of the following, then the respective additional property is implied as well:
    • <a href="http://example.com"> - set the 'url' property to the 'href' attribute
    • <img src="p.jpg"> - set the 'photo' property to the 'src' attribute
    • <object data="http://example.com/p">
      • if the 'type' attribute is a MIME type starting with "image/", then set the 'photo' property to the 'data' attribute
      • if the 'type' attribute is a MIME type starting with "audio/", then set the 'sound' property to the 'data' attribute

Issues:

  • could only be used for "people" hCards, since no "org", nor any location properties would be implied.

This notion of root only shorthand syntax (ROSS), could (and probably should) be generalized to all compound-microformats. Of course it will require that all compound-microformats has only one required property (all others being optional), thats value is then implied by the content of the root only syntax. Thus:

In addition, all compound properties of a microformat should have zero or one required subproperties, and similar to ROSS, should imply their required (or primary optional if none are required) subproperty accordingly. E.g.

  • "adr" should/could imply "extended-address"
  • "geo" could imply "latitude" from the first decimal number in its text value, and if it is followed by non-numerical content (e.g. a "," or ";" or " " or " longitude:"), "longitude" from the first decimal number that followed that chunk of non-numerical content.

Named locations

Most hCards contain contact information for people or organizations. But locations that aren't organizations are also deserving of their own hCard (e.g. somebody's house/apartment). This situation can be represented by combining "fn" and "extended-address".

"fn" and "extended-address" combination

Proposal: Similar to organization contact info, if the "fn" property and an "extended-address" property have the exact same value (typically because they are set on the same element, e.g. class="fn extended-address"), then

  1. The hCard represents contact information for a place and SHOULD be treated as such.
  2. The author also MUST NOT set the "N" property, or set it (and any sub-properties) explicitly to the empty string "".
  3. Parsers SHOULD handle the missing "n" property by implying empty values for all the "n" sub-properties.

Further proposal: Consider also an hCard for a City, "Birmingham, England": Birmingham may be the "fn" and the "locality", but it's not an "extended-address". Perhaps the rule should be that the hCard is for a place if the "fn" is on any address component (e.g "fn locality" or "fn street-address")?

For further consideration: One real problem right now is that we provide a field for our users to enter a 'Location' on our User Pages. In real life this has ranged from '8th floor', 'New York', 'Company Name', My Desk', 'http://some.site.com' - the majority being generalized geographic city or state names. Right now there is no property to properly handle this, but this one appears to come close. If this cannot be used for such purposes I would ask that this be looked into further as I don't think its a unique problem.

  • Have you considered using label instead of adr?

Examples in the wild

  • The named location "Picnic benches" in the address "Picnic benches, South Park, San Francisco, California" in a blog post on adactio.com.
<span class="vcard">
 <span class="adr">
  <span class="fn extended-address">Picnic benches</span>
  <span class="street-address">South Park</span>
  <span class="locality">San Francisco</span>
  <span class="region">California</span>
 </span>
</span>

Potential examples in the wild

  • The location "Phone Boxes by the Sealife Centre" on Upcoming is currently marked up as "fn org":
<div class="vcard">
 <div class="fn org">Phone Boxes by the Sealife Centre</div>
  <div class="adr">
   <span class="street-address">Marine Parade</span><br />
   <span class="locality">Brighton & Hove</span>,
   <span class="region">England</span>
   <span class="postal-code">BN2 1TB</span><br />
   <span class="country">United Kingdom</span><br />
   <span class="tel">01273 606674</span>
  </div>
 <div class="note">Just a meeting place, in case the venue changes.</div>
</div>

This could be marked up as:

<div class="vcard">
 <div class="adr">
  <div class="fn extended-address">Phone Boxes by the Sealife Centre</div>
   <span class="street-address">Marine Parade</span><br />
   <span class="locality">Brighton & Hove</span>,
   <span class="region">England</span>
   <span class="postal-code">BN2 1TB</span><br />
   <span class="country">United Kingdom</span><br />
   <span class="tel">01273 606674</span>
  </div>
 <div class="note">Just a meeting place, in case the venue changes.</div>
</div>

Concerns

The above seems to be an elegant solution, but a wider variety of examples form published pages are needed, to be sure it meets all common scenarios. these should include cases where "adr" is not already used; note that in that case an extra level of nesting is required. The implications of this, for hCards already published, should be considered.

Also, what about hCards for published locations, which already include an extended address?

e.g.

<div class="vcard">
  <span class="fn org">Powell's Pool</span>
  <span class="adr">
    <span class="extended-address">Sutton Park</span>
    <span class="locality">Birmingham</span>
    <span class="country-name">England</span>
  </span>
</div>

Andy Mabbett 05:40, 15 Dec 2007 (PST)

Revised proposal

named location formats

Previous named location format efforts:

Simple GeoRSS featurename

The Simple GeoRSS vocabulary contains the following named location example in the "Additional Properties" section that references a featurename tag.

Feature Type, Feature Name, and Relationship Tags

The Feature Type, Feature Name, and Relationship tags are specified as GeoRSS elements.

    <georss:point>45.256 -110.45</georss:point>
    <georss:featuretypetag>city</georss:featuretypetag>

    <georss:relationshiptag>is-centered-at</georss:relationshiptag>

    <georss:featurename>Podunk</georss:featurename>

A search for featurename on georss.org fails to find any other references however, including a definition.

An email on the georss list from Dec 2006 thread "featurename, other missing bits from the site" notes that "there is some updating to do" in response to a concern that "that descriptions of "featurename" are not present on GeoRSS Simple and the GeoRSS Model. GeoRSS GML makes no mention of the non-geometric properties at all."

FN Nickname semantic

There are many sites (e.g. Flickr, Consumating) which permit the user to both have a multi-word login/handle/alias, and not show their real name (fn, n, given-name, family-name etc.).

For the people represented by the profile pages of these sites, the best we can do is mark-up their login/handle/alias as their "nickname". Originally, we had thought that such handles etc. were single words only, and thus we created the Implied nickname optimization accordingly, where you can markup the handle as an "fn", and have it automatically set a "nickname" property value, and empty values for all the "n" sub-values.

In order to deal with multi-word handles, similar to the hCard Organization contact info method, the following is proposed:

"fn" and "nickname" combination

Due to the use of potentially multi-word nicknames/handles/usernames in content published on the Web, (e.g. on sites like Flickr and Consumating), hCard has a mechanism for specifying a multi-word "fn" that is also a "nickname" without affecting any "n" sub-properties that are otherwise specified, and explicitly implying empty defaults for "n" sub-properties.

Similar to the implied "nickname" optimization, if the "fn" property and a "nickname" property have the exact same value (typically because they are set on the same element, e.g. class="fn nickname"), then

  1. The content of the "fn" is treated as a "nickname" property value.
  2. Parsers should handle the missing "n" property by implying empty values for all the "n" sub-properties.

Implied FN from N

Since the "n" property is more detailed and structured than the "fn" property, and hcard-examples-in-wild have shown that very often what is specified for "n" sub-properties is also specified for the "fn" property, we could add the following implied "fn" optimization which would permit sites to only use "n" and its subproperties.

In addition, some sites don't have contiguous uninterrupted text that represents the desired "fn" value, and would much rather have the "fn" implied from "n" subproperties. E.g. "Citizen Space Citizens" on hcard-examples-in-wild.

implied "fn" from "n" optimization

If an hCard has no "fn", yet has an "n" property with one or more subproperties, then the "fn" property value can be implied by concatenating the "n" subproperty values as follows, with a space between each subproperty value, and multiple subproperty instances.

  • 'honorific-prefix'es (as found in document order)
  • 'given-name'
  • 'additional-name's (as found in document order)
  • 'family-name'
  • 'honorific-suffix'es (as found in document order)

Implied N from its subproperties

Since the "n" subproperties are sufficiently uniquely named (that is, they are not used by any other hCard property), and "n" is one of the hcard-singular-properties, it is possible to consider leaving out the "n" property itself fo the hCard, and simply directlly using the subproperties, as properties of the hCard.

implied "n" from its subproperties

If an hCard has no "fn" nor "n" properties, then the entire scope of the hCard is considered to be inside an implied "n" property.

E.g. this markup:

<span class="vcard">
 <span class="given-name">Tantek</span>
 <span class="family-name">Çelik</span>
</span>

would be treated from a parsing perspective as:

<span class="vcard"><span class="n">
 <span class="given-name">Tantek</span>
 <span class="family-name">Çelik</span>
</span></span>

Which, with the implied "fn" from "n" optimization above, would then be effectively treated as:

<span class="vcard"><span class="fn n">
 <span class="given-name">Tantek</span>
 <span class="family-name">Çelik</span>
</span></span>

Examples

  • See hcard-examples, which provides several illustrative instructive examples, as well as 1:1 hCard examples for each example in RFC 2426.

Using RFC2806 with hCard

RFC 2806 defines the telephone scheme "tel:", "fax:" and "modem:" to handle phone communications with URIs in the same way, "mailto:" is defined for email. It's part of the list or registered schemes by IANA : Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) SCHEMES

tel   telephone [RFC2806]
fax   fax       [RFC2806]
modem modem     [RFC2806]

It is practical to write your tel number like this.

<a class="tel"      href="tel:+1-919-555-7878">+1-919-555-7878</a>

or even

<a class="tel"      href="tel:+1-919-555-7878">Mr Smith's phone</a>

You can add support for "tel:" to your desktop and to your browser

On the CSS front… You could for example add automagically an icon. I have put the property !important for those who wants to add it to their own stylesheet in their browsers, so they know type of links when browsing.

a[href^="tel:"]:before {
    content: '\260f  ' !important;
    padding-left: 20px !important; }

a[href^="mailto:"]:before {
    content: '\2709  ' !important;
    padding-left: 20px !important; }

for hCard 1.1

hCard 1.1 will incorporate all fixes going into hCard 1.0.1, and in addition, as a minor feature revision, will incorporate changes and a few new properties based on:

  • hcard-1-0-1
  • existing research and resolved issues
  • vcard-suggestions
  • vCard 4.0 proposed standard - properties that represent existing content in the wild
  • potentially other widely used characteristics from sites using hCard (e.g. Wikipedia infobox and other templates).

hCard 1.1 will likely be one of a few predefined vocabularies as part of the microformats-2 work and only defined within the microformats-2 syntax.

As I evaluate brainstorms listed below, if they make sense to include in hCard 1.1, I'll move them here. Tantek

languages spoken

Consider languages-spoken as a possible addition based on examples gathered.

coverage area

Consider coverage-area-examples as a possible addition based on examples gathered.

just brainstorming

The following brainstorming suggestions are interesting ideas for how to use or improve hCard but are theoretical (no real world examples found yet), or have insufficient real world examples to be deserving of explicit inclusion in the specification.

named phone numbers

hCard is already specified for use for:

  • people
  • organizations
  • named locations

Numerous examples of all of these can be found on the web.

Another possible addition is a named telephone numbers. So far the examples are fairly limited:

In this case, Zakim, for example, has a name, a telephone number, and a URL for "status".

It also makes sense as something that might be in your address book, and therefore have a vCard serialization.

So it might make sense to have an hCard for Zakim which contained the information that you might want added to your address book about it.

Another way to achieve this would be with perhaps a new/different "tel" microformat extracted from hCard, perhaps even a named "tel" microformat (e.g. with root class name "vtel", properties "fn", "tel", "url" based on the above example.).

for hCard 2

done

  • hcard-implied - has been incorporated and generalized for all microformats