[jdev] Re: newer version of vcard

[Peter Saint-Andre]

In article <11D121AB355B69448D3A9F2132D2A3AA42021C at niobe.BlueHands.de>,
 "Heiner Wolf" <wolf at bluehands.de> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I know these requirements. Our users were not satisfied with the vcard. 
> Vcard basically has contact information. Users of very much chat oriented 
> communities demand more personal information like hobbies, eyecolor, 
> zodiac sign and more. We created a separate xml data structure containing:
> 
> <name/> <profession/> <birthdate/> <age/> <gender/> <zodiacsign/> 
> <eyecolor/> <country/> <languages/> <hobbies/> <interests/> <statement/> 
> <homeurl/> <favouriteurls/> <html/>
> 
> to be stored on the server in iq-get-query-xmlns "storage:client:profile".
> 
> Most of them are just free text. The data is stored as CDATA.
> 
> This works, but maybe it is not the way to go today. 
> - maybe you should use pubsub as protocol. However you can not expect 
> anyone to have a pubsub on their server. Availability of pubsub to your 
> users depends on your setup, client, server, etc. 
> - maybe you should use a more sophisticated data structure. RDF comes 
> to mind with various vocabularies from foaf, bio, and other namespaces. 
> A simple XML as we use it, is easier implementation wise, but RDF is 
> technically much better.

We all know that vCard is sub-optimal and need to find a real solution. 
Other projects are interested in this kind of thing as well (Atom, FOAF, 
etc.) and we're talking with them about how to move forward and kill off 
vCard.

/psa