Andy Powell wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Jul 2004, Phil Barker wrote:
>
>
>>What is the consequence of a vCard processor knowing it doesn't have
>>valid entries N and FN? If the consequence is LOM records not getting
>>processed then it seems a high price to pay. But perhaps I'm being
>>overly pessimistic.
>
>
> Well, FWIW, MS-Office tools are happy to parse both of the following
>
> http://homes.ukoln.ac.uk/~lisap/test1.vcf
> http://homes.ukoln.ac.uk/~lisap/test2.vcf
>
> (empty N and FN and missing N and FN) which (I'll happily admit) is not
> exactly an exhaustive test, but does indicate that tools might be more
> relaxed about these things than you think.
>
Yes, I've every reason to believe that vCard /tools/ are pretty
slack--I've seen the way that importing a mozilla address book into a
Palm gives you 20 screens worth of "--Unnamed--" entries. That's why I
would like to see something meaningful in FN.
But what I was actually more concerned about was whether parsers such as
perl modules written to handle vCards (see
http://search.cpan.org/search?query=vCard&mode=all) would cope. I guess
they have to since most applications generating vCards are so lax. I'll
send a message to the IMC vCard maillist to see if anyone there thinks
otherwise.
Chris: your LOM Validator complains about missing N: and FN: values: was
this something you built in or did it come with the vCard parser you use?
This all seems a bit reminiscent of people a few years back saying their
non-valid HTML was fine just because it could be rendered by the current
browsers. :-(
>>
>>How about:
>><![CDATA[BEGIN:VCARD
>>FN:WH Smith
>>N:none
>>ORG:WH Smith
>>VERSION:3.0
>>END:VCARD]]>
>>
>>or
>><![CDATA[BEGIN:VCARD
>>FN:WH Smith
>>ORG:WH Smith
>>VERSION:3.0
>>END:VCARD]]>
>
>
> I still cannot tell if these (particularly the second one) mean "the
> person called WH Smith who is affiliated to the organisation called WH
> Smith" or "the organisation called WH Smith"??
>
> On the other hand
>
> <![CDATA[BEGIN:VCARD
> FN:WH Smith
> ORG:WH Smith
> VERSION:3.0
> NOTE:objectClass\: organization
> END:VCARD]]>
>
> is unambiguous and as compliant with vCard as your second one.
True, it's better than my second suggestion (which was an attempt at
minimalism), but, IMHO, not as good as my first (And I wouldn't mind
adding your NOTE: to that, but I think that if FN=ORG and N=none then
there's not much chance of any other interpretation being true: if I'm
*telling* you that the family name is "none", it can't be Smith).
> But I'm
> repeating myself so I'll try to shutup now! :-)
>
Well, I don't mind that: repetition is an important part of most
educational designs. Thank you for your patience.
Phil.
--
Phil Barker Learning Technology Adviser
ICBL, School of Mathematics and Computer Science
Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS
Tel: work - 0131 451 3278 home - 0131 221 1352
Web: http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~philb/
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