For info, this is how the Mac address book exports vCards for organisations:
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
N:;;;;
FN:MyCompany
ORG:MyCompany;
EMAIL;type=INTERNET;type=WORK;type=pref:[log in to unmask]
TEL;type=WORK;type=pref:0001 1010101
TEL;type=CELL:0001 1010101
X-ABShowAs:COMPANY
END:VCARD
Note the "X-ABShowAs" attribute there...
On 15/7/04 5:13 pm, "Andy Powell" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Jul 2004, Phil Barker wrote:
>
>> After some consideration of Chris's original message, I think I would be
>> happier with
>> <![CDATA[BEGIN:VCARD
>> FN:None
>> N:None
>> ORG:WH Smith
>> NOTE:objectClass\: organization
>> VERSION:3.0
>> END:VCARD]]>
>>
>> Since I think Chris's suggestion mis-uses both N's additional names and FN,
>> and as Andy has pointed out there's no need to put incorrect information
>> there. I'm not sure "None", is the right value, but is the one recommended
>> in CanCore, and I don't see much point in choosing a more appropriate term
>> (such as "not applicable") just to ignore it.
>
> As an aside, I think this highlights the nonesense that tends to occur
> when you mandate an element and then find that it isn't always appropriate
> to use it :-(. The logic goes something like this
>
> FN and N are mandatory...
> therefore we have to provide them...
> but there isn't a real value...
> so we'll put 'None' instead.
>
> The trouble is... when I get the string 'None' as a consumer of the vCard,
> how do I know whether it means "There isn't an appropriate value' or the
> name of the entity represented by the vCard is 'None'?
>
> If the element doesn't have a value, either leave it blank (which I
> think metadata consumers should reasonably interpret as "the value of this
> element is <null>") or don't provide the element at all (which I think
> metadata consumers should reasonably intepret as "no information
> provided").
>
> All in all, FWIW, I think I prefer any of the following to the 'None'
> suggestion above:
>
> Option 1
>
> <![CDATA[BEGIN:VCARD
> FN:
> N:
> ORG:WH Smith
> NOTE:objectClass\: organization
> VERSION:3.0
> END:VCARD]]>
>
> or
>
> Option 2
>
> <![CDATA[BEGIN:VCARD
> ORG:WH Smith
> NOTE:objectClass\: organization
> VERSION:3.0
> END:VCARD]]>
>
> or my original suggestion of
>
> Option 3
>
> <![CDATA[BEGIN:VCARD
> FN:WH Smith
> N:WH Smith
> ORG:WH Smith
> NOTE:objectClass\: organization
> VERSION:3.0
> END:VCARD]]>
>
> I guarantee you that at some point in the future exactly the same kind of
> nonesense will occur in UK LOM Core for every element that is currently
> set to mandatory - and that we should therefore be relaxing our notions of
> mandatoriness by allowing implementors to leave the value blank or not
> provide the element at all as appropriate.
>
> Andy
> --
> Distributed Systems, UKOLN, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK
> http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/a.powell +44 1225 383933
> Resource Discovery Network http://www.rdn.ac.uk/
> ECDL 2004, Bath, UK - 12-17 Sept 2004 - http://www.ecdl2004.org/
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