Re: vcard:AddressBook

On Thu, Mar 6, 2025 at 14:31 Michiel de Jong <michiel@unhosted.org> wrote:

> Thanks for the pointers Sarven!
>
> I agree with Melvin though, if the people using the vcard ontology (we)
> are unable to edit the vcard ontology, then that means that the tools are
> not aligned in our favour.
>

I believe the point of that vcard-rdf note was to reflect into RDF the
existing vCard design rather than to improve upon it, ie making up new
stuff.


Looking at
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6350.html

….the string “addressbook” only seems used once, for an example website url
path.

How much of vcard-rdf are you actually using? If there are non-gigantic
patches to FOAF that would address this usecase and the community generally
thought useful we could look into that.

Cheers,

Dan



> If the answer to "how can I use the vcard ontology" is "don't use it, use
> a different one", then that also doesn't really help us.
>
> That repo https://github.com/w3c/ns/ you mentioned says it's not
> deployed, and I can't find the source code of
> https://www.w3.org/TR/vcard-rdf/ on GitHub.
>
> I also read https://github.com/w3c/ns/issues/2 (thanks for working on
> that!) and maybe the conclusion is indeed that the W3C is not offering its
> community groups sufficient tooling for evolving vocabularies?
>
> Of course, I can host a vocabulary on https://michielbdejong.com/ns/ or
> on https://solidproject.org/ns/ but that will create a walled garden
> without interoperability.
> We can also migrate away from W3C namespaced vocabularies to schema.org,
> but that only works well if we migrate the entire vcard vocabulary (copy
> and deprecate), so that all app developers end up at schema.org and we
> can maintain inter-app interop.
> Mixing (newer) predicates from one vocabulary onto classes from another
> one soon becomes ugly and messy, and harder for the developer to stay
> compatible with the RDF that other developers write.
>
> I hope the W3C can offer us a workable solution for this, because to me
> they feel like the most suitable organisation in the world to be the go-to
> place for interoperable semantic web ontologies.
>
> CC'ing vocab-services@w3.org to this thread, according to
> https://www.w3.org/2016/08/namespaces/ they respond within two business
> days, so let's wait for their instructions.
>
> Cheers,
> Michiel
>
> On Thu, 6 Mar 2025 at 11:25, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> čt 6. 3. 2025 v 11:16 odesílatel Sarven Capadisli <info@csarven.ca>
>> napsal:
>>
>>> On 2025-03-06 10:04, Michiel de Jong wrote:
>>> > Hi all,
>>> >
>>> > In the Solid CG we are using `vcard:AddressBook`, but it came to our
>>> > attention that this class is not defined in
>>> https://www.w3.org/TR/vcard-
>>> > rdf/ <https://www.w3.org/TR/vcard-rdf/>.
>>> >
>>> > The document says:
>>> >  > If you wish to make comments regarding this document, please send
>>> > them to semantic-web@w3.org <mailto:semantic-web@w3.org>>
>>> >
>>> > We have documented/used `vcard:AddressBook` in the following places:
>>> > * https://pdsinterop.org/conventions/addressbook/ <https://
>>> > pdsinterop.org/conventions/addressbook/>
>>> > * https://github.com/SolidOS/contacts-pane/blob/
>>> > ae1819676bb19a2b0cc7a02b4417c96751ff5297/mintNewAddressBook.js#L60-L75
>>> > <https://github.com/SolidOS/contacts-pane/blob/
>>> > ae1819676bb19a2b0cc7a02b4417c96751ff5297/mintNewAddressBook.js#L60-L75>
>>> > * https://github.com/solid-contrib/data-modules/blob/
>>> > d732671f5c5a37b9748ce90bf3220e2e36336d8f/contacts/src/rdflib/
>>> > ContactsModuleRdfLib.ts#L48 <https://github.com/solid-contrib/data-
>>> > modules/blob/d732671f5c5a37b9748ce90bf3220e2e36336d8f/contacts/src/
>>> > rdflib/ContactsModuleRdfLib.ts#L48>
>>> >
>>> > How can we go about adding `vcard:AddressBook` to the vCard
>>> ontology, or
>>> > what would be the best way forward here?
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > Many thanks,
>>> > Michiel de Jong
>>> > Co-chair
>>> > Solid CG
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Michiel, best to check directly with W3C Team.
>>>
>>> You may want to look at Solid CG's Contribution Guidelines:
>>>
>>>
>>> https://github.com/w3c-cg/solid/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#vocabulary-management
>>>
>>> and perhaps more specifically the referenced:
>>>
>>> https://www.w3.org/2016/08/namespaces/
>>>
>>> That's roughly the most reasonable path considering that the SW IG is
>>> closed. Other changes (additions or errata) were done in the same way to
>>> vocabularies that are no longer maintained by a W3C Group or a BG/CG.
>>>
>>> So, propose the actual changes somewhere, e.g.,
>>> https://github.com/solid/vocab or perhaps https://github.com/w3c/ns/
>>> (although that's not where development on vcard happens), and then
>>> signal the wider community (as you've done with this mailing list) for
>>> review.
>>>
>>> BTW, AFAIK, the use of missing vcard:AddressBook was initially raised in:
>>>
>>> https://github.com/solid/type-indexes/issues/35
>>
>>
>> If we want to effectively build apps, we need to be able to evolve vocabs
>> in a more agile way than this.
>>
>> I was thinking about this very problem yesterday.
>>
>> My conclusion was to make something, similar to, schema.org for Solid.
>> As a baseline it would be a context that contains all of schema.org.
>> Then add aliases to all the commonly used terms in Solid.  And allow
>> extension points.  I think I could fire this up quite quickly.  Would
>> anyone else have use for such a thing?
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -Sarven
>>> https://csarven.ca/#i
>>>
>>>