Re: contact format coordination - next steps

(+vcarddav)

(Just trying to reply to the technical points concerning vCard...)

On 2010-09-08 12:12, Joseph Smarr wrote:
> For instance, compare the
> representations of gender in Portable Contacts and the proposed vCard XML:
> 
>     <gender>male</gender>
> 
>     vs. 
> 
>     <sex><integer>1</integer></sex>
> 
> 
> I think it's hard to argue that the first version (PoCo) is far more
> readable and semantically clear. 

more readable: Agreed, but who cares? Users are not going to see this.
more semantically clear: Disagree, the semantics of vCard are very well
defined.

Note that we had exactly <gender>male</gender> at the beginning and
gradually changed it to what we have now, for two reasons:

1. It's better to follow standards. In this case, ISO 5218 applies. It
says that the term "sex" is preferred, and defines the applicable
values. Standards are good.

2. Usage of the <integer> element provides two advantages (which are not
related to the sex property in particular, but apply at large):

  - It allows using parameter elements which would be siblings of the
value text-node otherwise, making the parser much simpler.

  - It facilitates extensibility using XML namespaces.

> Similarly, we chose to name the list of mailing address fields
> "addresses" instead of vCard's anachronistic "adr"

Again, why should anyone care about the names of the elements? Users are
not going to see this.

> and we dropped the
> "post-office box" and "extended address" sub-fields, which in practice
> are ill-defined and used by none of the major address book providers
> we're aware of, preferring instead a single "streetAddress" multi-line
> field, which is what almost everyone implements anyway and sticks in the
> third sub-field of adr ("street address").

This is also available in vCard. ADR is for formatted addresses whereas
LABEL is for unformatted addresses.

> vCard does not seem to have added
> many (if any) social networking fields.

Not in vCard *core*. A separate RFC will address this. The draft is here:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-george-vcarddav-vcard-extension-02

Simon
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Received on Thursday, 9 September 2010 11:56:24 UTC