[March 18, 2002] The IETF released the specification for vCard version 3 in two parts: (1) RFC 2425, MIME Content-Type for Directory Information; (2) RFC 2426, vCard MIME Directory Profile. According to the overview, the vCard 'electronic business card' is "a powerful new means of Personal Data Interchange (PDI) that is automating the traditional business card. Whether it's your computer (hand held organizer, Personal Information Manager (PIM), electronic eail application, Web Browser) or telephone, the vCard will revolutionize your personal communications. Features: (1) vCards carry vital directory information such as name, addresses (business, home, mailing, parcel), telephone numbers (home, business, fax, pager, cellular, ISDN, voice, data, video), email addresses and Internet URLs (Universal Resource Locators). (2) All vCards can also have graphics and multimedia including photographs, company logos, audio clips such as for name pronunciation; (3) Geographic and time zone information in vCards let others know when to contact you; (4) vCards support multiple languages; (5) The vCard spec is transport and operating system independent so you can have vCard-ready software on any computer; (6) vCards are Internet friendly, standards based, and have wide industry support..."
[March 02, 2001] "Representing vCard Objects in RDF/XML." By Renato Iannella (IPR Systems). W3C Note 22 February 2001. Submitted February 02, 2001. "This note specifies a Resource Description Framework (RDF) encoding of the vCard profile defined by RFC 2426 and to provide equivalent functionality to its standard format. The motivation is to enable the common and consistent description of persons (using the existing semantics of vCard) and to encode these in RDF/XML." The note "specifies a Resource Description Framework (RDF) expression that corresponds to the vCard electronic business card profile defined by RFC 2426. This specification provides equivalent functionality to the standard format defined by [VCARD] Version 3.0. RDF is an application of the Extensible Markup Language. Documents structured in accordance with this RDF/XML encoding may also be known as 'RDF vCard' documents. This specification is in no way intended to create a separate definition for the vCard schema. The sole purpose for this note is to define an alternative RDF/XML encoding for the format defined by VCARD. The RDF vCard does not introduce any capability not expressible in the format defined by VCARD. However, an attempt has been made to leverage the capabilities of the XML and RDF syntax to better articulate the original intent of the vCard authors..." See also the submission request and the W3C staff comment. The submission was brought to the attention of the W3C RDF Interest Group.
[December 10, 2002] A 2002-10-03 communiqué from Peter Saint-Andre (Jabber Software Foundation) references an informational Jabber Enhancement Proposal (JEP) that "more fully and accurately describes the vCard XML format used in the Jabber community. This document, numbered JEP-0054 [3], is now the canonical description of the Jabber usage." See JEP-0054: vcard-temp, Version 0.2 (2002-11-06). "This JEP documents the vCard-XML format currently in use within the Jabber community. A future JEP will recommend a standards-track protocol to supersede this informational document. The basic functionality is for a user to store and retrieve an XML representation of his or her vCard using the data storage capabilities native to all existing Jabber server implementations. This is done by by sending an <iq/> of type 'set' (storage) or 'get' (retrieval) to one's Jabber server containing a <vCard/> child scoped by the 'vcard-temp' namespace, with the <vCard/> element containing the actual vCard-XML elements as defined by the vCard-XML DTD. Other users may then view one's vCard information..." See also the XMPP specifications for use of vCard in instant messaging: "Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP)." [cache/snapshot]
See preceding entry. vCard-XML protocol is "an extension of Jabber, an open, XML-based protocol mainly used for instant messaging and presence." See: (1) the History of the vCard-XML protocol, (2) the DTD 2001-05-20 [added elements JABBERID and DESC]; and (3) the original DTD of 2000-03-21. According to the 'History' note: "When the Jabber project was originally looking for a method to store personal user information, the only available XML solution was the proposal to the IETF for XML vCards. vCards are an existing and widely-used standard for personal user information storage, somewhat like a business card. vCards can be exchanged through eMail and other electronic exchanges. By combining vCards and XML, the proposal would allow XML-based systems such as Jabber to easily and quickly adapt vCards to their use. Dawson, the original author of the version 2 proposal, created another RFC in November 15, 1998 for version 3. Unfortunately, both proposals died in the IETF with no successor. The Jabber project continued to use the version 2 proposal and DTD, and appeared to be the only users of the DTD. No similar DTD has arisen in the past several years since the vCard XML DTD was originally proposed, thus the Jabber project had no other standard to switch to. Out of necessity, the Jabber (now the Jabber Software Foundation) wishes to continue the evolution of the DTD to a refined standard that is usable by other groups." [cache: DTD 2001-05-20 and original DTD 2000-03-21]
[August 05, 1998] Frank Dawson (Lotus Development Corporation) is author of a new Internet Draft proposing The vCard v3.0 XML DTD. The vCard format is a "standard format for electronic business card data, useful for exchange of personal directory data across the Internet, as well as in non-Internet environments." Document Reference: July 19, 1998, draft-dawson-vcard-xml-dtd-00.txt. An accompanying document "vCard v3.0 Formal Public Identifier" (draft-dawson-vcard-fpi-00.txt; July 1, 1998) defines an FPI for the version 3.0 vCard. The vCard v3.0 XML DTD memo "defines an XML Document Type Definition (DTD) that corresponds to the vCard, electronic business card format defined by VCARD. This DTD provides equivalent functionality to the standard format defined by VCARD. By introducing this DTD to the same body that formulated the IETF vCard specification, it is hoped that the XML encoding does not evolve in incompatible ways with the MIME content type for vCard. The vCard DTD does not introduce any capability not expressible in the format defined by VCARD. However, an attempt has been made to leverage the capabilities of the XML syntax to better articulate the original intent of the vCard authors. The vCard DTD promotes a number of vCard properties into attributes on the 'vCard' element. This has been done to express these properties as 'global attributes' for the vCard object, as a whole. For example, the VERSION, REV, PRODID, UID, CLASS properties have been 'mapped' into attributes on the vCard object. The mailing list for discussion of this memo is ietf-vcard-xml@imc.org."
[January 19, 1999] A new draft version of "Representing vCard v3.0 in RDF" (from Renato Iannella) is now available. From the introduction: "This memo specifies a Resource Description Format (RDF) encoding that corresponds to the vCard electronic business card profile defined by RFC 2425 (VCARD). This specification provides equivalent functionality to the standard format defined by VCARD. RDF is an application of the eXtensible Markup Language XML. Documents structured in accordance with this RDF encoding may also be known as 'RDF vCard' documents. This specification is in no way intended to create a separate definition for the vCard schema. The sole purpose for this memo is to define an alternative RDF encoding for the format defined by VCARD. The RDF vCard does not introduce any capability not expressible in the format defined by VCARD. However, an attempt has been made to leverage the capabilities of the XML and RDF syntax to better articulate the original intent of the vCard authors. This memo attempts to be consistent with other XML-based vCard formats, such as the XML DTD." [local archive copy]
References:
- vCard and vCalendar
- The vCard v3.0 XML DTD, or via FTP from ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-dawson-vcard-xml-dtd-00.txt; [local archive copy]
- "The vCard v3.0 XML DTD." As: 'draft-dawson-vcard-xml-dtd-01.txt, October 15, 1998.' [local archive copy]
- vCard v3.0 Formal Public Identifier, or via FTP from ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-dawson-vcard-fpi-00.txt; [local archive copy]
- vCard MIME Directory Profile. By Frank Dawson and Tim Howes. See: ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-asid-mime-vcard-07.txt; [local archive copy]
- Using VCARDs with iCalendar. By Doug Royer (INET-Consulting LLC). IETF Application Working Group, Internet Draft. Reference: 'draft-royer-ical-vcard-01.txt'. October 3, 2003, expires March 2004. "This memo is a registration of a iCAL component called 'VCARD'. It describes a way to include contact information in iCAL objects. The contact information is included by the insertion of vCARD objects into iCAL objects. Also included is an extension to LDAPVCARD to allow CAP URLs." [source]
- The Electronic Business Card - Version 2.1, September 18, 1996. [local archive copy]
- vCard Overview - From IMC
- [August 20, 1998] "We also set up a vCard schema on http://metadata.net which is used by Reggie to generate RDF encodings of vCard. It is limited - given the schema language - but useful. . ." (Dr Renato Iannella).
- vCARD Schema, from DSTC [local archive copy]
- ietf-vcard-xml mailing list - XML DTD for vCard.
- Note also: vCard DTD [xCard] (Jason R. Cupp). [local archive copy]
- Note: Ron Daniel (DATAFUSION) mentioned a personal interest in 'what an XML treatment of vCard would look like if it were based on RDF. . . [XML-DEV 1998-10-27]
- "vCard Extensions for IMPP." By Cullen Jennings (Cisco Systems). Reference: 'draft-jennings-impp-vcard-02'. February 14, 2004, expires August 14, 2004. 7 pages. "This draft describes an extension to vCard to support Instant Messaging (IM) and Presence Protocol (PP) applications. IM and PP are becoming increasingly common ways of communicating, and users want to save this contact information in their address books. This draft allows a URI that is associated with IM or PP to be specified inside of a vCard." [source]
- See: "Markup Languages for Names and Addresses."
