vCard
The Electronic Business Card
Version 2.1
A versit Consortium Specification
September 18, 1996
Copyrights
© 1996, International Business Machines Corp., Lucent Technologies, Inc., and
Siemens. All rights reserved.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute this publication provided that it
is reproduced in its entirety without modification and includes the above
copyright notice and this permission notice.
No licenses, express or implied, are granted with respect to any of the
technology described in this publication. International Business Machines Corp.,
Lucent Technologies, Inc., and Siemens retain all their intellectual property
rights in the technology described in this publication.
Even though International Business Machines Corp., Lucent Technologies, Inc.,
and Siemens have reviewed this specification, INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES
CORP., LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES, INC, AND SIEMENS, MAKE NO WARRANTY OR
REPRESENTATION, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, WITH RESPECT TO THIS PUBLICATION, ITS
QUALITY OR ACCURACY, NONINFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. AS A RESULT, THIS SPECIFICATION IS DELIVERED "AS IS" AND THE
READER ASSUMES THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO ITS QUALITY, ACCURACY OR SUITABILITY FOR
ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE..
IN NO EVENT WILL INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP., LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES,
INC, AND SIEMENS, BE LIABLE FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES RESULTING FROM ANY DEFECT OR INACCURACY IN THIS
PUBLICATION, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
This publication is provided with RESTRICTED RIGHTS. Use, duplication, or
disclosure by the Government are subject to restrictions set forth in DFARS
252.227-7013 or 48 CFR 52.227-19, as applicable.
Trademarks
versit, the versit logo, versitcard, vCard, and vCalendar are trademarks of
Apple Computer, Inc., AT&T Corp., International Business Machines Corp., and
Siemens.
Apple, is a trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. registered in the U.S. and other
countries.
AT&T and ATTMail are registered trademarks of AT&T Corp.
IBM, IBM Mail, and OS/2 are registered trademarks of International Business
Machines Corporation.
America Online is a registered trademark of America Online, Inc.
CompuServe, CompuServe Information Services are registered trademarks of
Compuserve Incorporated.
MCIMail is a registered trademark of MCI Communications Corporation.
Microsoft is a registered trademark, and Microsoft Windows is a trademark of
Microsoft Corporation.
Prodigy is a registered trademark of Prodigy Services Company.
Unicode is a registered trademark of Unicode, Inc.
Contributors
Roland Alden
Greg Ames, Ames & Associates
Masanari Arai, Puma Technologies
Stephen W. Bartlett
Donal Carroll
Liang-Jye Chang, Starfish Software
Frank Dawson, IBM Corporation
Ken Dobson, IntelliLink Inc.
Scott Feldstein, Nimble Software, Inc.
Anik Ganguly, OnTime/Division of FTP Software.
Beijing Goo, Microsoft
Arvind K. Goyal, Lotus Development Corporation
Gary Hand, IBM Corporation
Tim Howes, Netscape Communications Corporation
Mark Joseph, Attachmate Corporation
Kerry Kelly, Now Software, Inc.
Phac Letuan, Apple Computer, Inc.
Pat Megowan, Counterpoint Sytems Foundry Inc.
Tohri Mori, IBM Japan/Salutation Consortium
Ravi Pandya, NetManage, Inc.
Geoff Ralston, Four11 Corporation
Steven Rummel, Lucent Technologies
Michael Santullo, Four11 Corporation
Vinod Seraphin, Lotus Development Corporation
Dexter Seely, Corex Technologies, Inc.
Vlad Shmunis, Ring Zero Systems Inc.
Dean Stevens, Now Software, Inc.
Michelle Watkins, Netscape Communications Corporation
Horst Widlewski, Siemens
Reference Information
The cited references contain provisions which, through reference in this
specification, constitute provisions of this specification. At the time of
publication, the indicated versions in the following references were valid.
Parties to agreements based on this specification are encouraged to research the
possibility of revised standards.
* ANSI X3.4-1977, Code for Information Interchange, American National
Standards Institute, 1977.
* CCITT (ITU) Recommendation E.163, Numbering Plan for The International
Telephone Service, CCITT Blue Book, Fascicle II.2, pp. 128-134, November, 1988.
* CCITT (ITU) Recommendation G.721, 32 kbit/s Adaptive Differential Pulse
Code Modulation (ADPCM), CCITT Red Book, Fascicle III.4, November, 1988.
* CCITT (ITU) Recommendation X.121, International Numbering Plan for Public
Data Networks, CCITT Blue Book, Fascicle VIII.3, pp. 317-332, November, 1988.
* CCITT (ITU) Recommendations X.500-X.521, Data Communication Networks:
Directory, CCITT Blue Book, Fascicle VIII.8, November, 1988.
* CCITT Recommendation X.520, The Directory-Selected Attribute Types, 1988.
* CCITT Recommendation X.521, The Directory-Selected Object Classes, 1988.
* IETF RFC 1738, Universal Resource Locator, December 1994.
* IETF Network Working Group RFC 1766, Tags for the Identification of
Languages, March 1995.
* IETF Network Working Group Draft, A MIME Content-Type for Directory
Information, January 1996. Available from the University of Michigan, 535 W.
William St., Ann Arbor, MI 48103-4943, FTP://ds.internic.net/Internet-
Drafts/draft-ietf-asid-mime-direct-01.txt.
* IETF Network Working Group Draft, An Application/Directory MIME Content-
Type Electronic Business Card Profile, May 1996. Available
FTP://ds.internic.net/Internet-Drafts/draft-ietf-asid-mime-vcard-00.txt.
* IETF Network Working Group Draft, UTF-8, A Transformation Format of
UNICODE and ISO 10646, July 1996. Available from FTP://ds.internic.net/Internet-
Drafts/draft-yergeau-utf8-01.txt.
* ISO 639, Code for The Representation of names of languages, International
Organization for Standardization, April, 1988.
* ISO 3166, Codes for The Representation of names of countries,
International Organization for Standardization, December, 1993.
* ISO 8601, Data elements and interchange formats-Information interchange-
Representation of dates and times, International Organization for
Standardization, June, 1988.
* ISO 8601, Technical Corrigendum 1, Data elements and interchange formats-
Information interchange-Representation of dates and times, International
Organization for Standardization, May, 1991.
* ISO 8859-1, Information Processing-8-Bit single-byte coded graphic
character sets-Part 1: Latin Alphabet No. 1, International Organization for
Standardization, February, 1987.
* ISO 9070, Information Processing-SGML support facilities-Registration
Procedures for Public Text Owner Identifiers, 1990-02-01.[DS1]
ï ISO/IEC 9070, Information TechnologyóSGML Support FacilitiesóRegistration
Procedures for Public Text Owner Identifiers, Second Edition, International
Organization for Standardization, April, 1991.
ï ISO/IEC 11180, Postal addressing, International Organization for
Standardization, 1993.
ï Appleís Representation of a Canonical Static DeviceID in The Telephony
Suite, version 1.0, Apple Computer, Inc., 1993.
* Microsoft TAPI in Microsoft Windows 3.1 Telephony Programmers' Guide,
version 1.0, Microsoft Corporation, 1993.
* RFC1521, MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) Part One: Mechanisms
for Specifying and Describing the Format of Internet Message Bodies, Network
Working Group, September, 1993.
* The Unicode Standard, Version 1.1: Version 1.0, Volume 1 (ISBN 0-201-
56788-1), version 1.0, volume 2 (ISBN 0-20-60845-6) and Unicode Technical Report
#4, The Unicode Standard, version 1.1, The Unicode Consortium, October, 1991.
Both references to be published by Addison-Wesley.
versit Update
versit is a multivendor development initiative of the communication and
computer industries, founded by Apple, AT&T, IBM and Siemens. The versit parties
believe that great potential exists in improving the nature of communications in
the business world-permitting companies to better manage their quality,
productivity, customer satisfaction and cost of operations, while expanding the
market opportunities for a variety of product and service vendors. versit
parties will jointly define and support open specifications that facilitate and
promote the interoperability of advanced personal information and communication
devices, networks and services.
The versit vision is to enable diverse communication and computing devices,
applications and services from competing vendors to interoperate in all
environments. Through developing a series of specifications for interoperability
among diverse communications and computing devices, applications, networks and
services, versit 's vision will become a reality.
versit 's primary development areas are in:
* Personal Data Interchange (PDI)
* Computer Telephone Integration (CTI)
* Conferencing and Messaging (C&M)
* Wired and Wireless connectivity
versit specifications are directed at both the decision makers and the
implementation teams of:
* Equipment Manufacturers
* Independent Software Vendors
* Information Service Providers
* Online Service Providers
* Software Houses
* Users
versit specifications are made available to any interested party. In turn,
versit encourages the support of our goals by soliciting feedback on versit
specifications.
All comments relating to versit or the material within this specification should
be submitted to:
versit
(800) 803-6240
+1 (201) 327-2803 (Outside USA)
pdi@versit.com
http://www.versit.com/pdi
Contents
Section 1 : Introduction
1.1 Overview
1.2 Scope
1.3 Contents
1.4 Definitions and Abbreviations
Section 2 : vCard Specificiation
2.1 Encoding Characteristics
2.1.1 vCard Object
2.1.2 Property
2.1.3 Delimiters
2.1.4 Grouping
2.1.4.1 vCard Grouping
2.1.4.2 Property Grouping
2.1.5 Encodings
2.1.6 Character Set
2.1.7 Language
2.1.8 Value Location
2.1.9 Binary Values
2.2 Identification Properties
2.2.1 Formatted Name
2.2.2 Name
2.2.3 Photograph
2.2.3.1 Photo Format Type
2.2.4 Birthdate
2.3 Delivery Addressing Properties
2.3.1 Delivery Address
2.3.1.1 Delivery Address Type
2.3.2 Delivery Label
2.3.2.1 Delivery Label Type
2.4 Telecommunications Addressing Properties
2.4.1 Telephone Number
2.4.1.1 Telephone Type
2.4.2 Electronic Mail
2.4.2.1 Electronic Mail Type
2.4.3 Mailer
2.4.4 Geographical Properties
2.4.5 Time Zone
2.4.6 Geographic Position
2.5 Organizational Properties
2.5.1 Title
2.5.2 Business Category
2.5.3 Logo
2.5.3.1 Logo Format Type
2.5.4 Agent
2.5.5 Organization Name and Organizational Unit
2.6 Explanatory Properties
2.6.1 Comment
2.6.2 Last Revision
2.6.3 Sound
2.6.3.1 Sound Digital Audio Type
2.6.4 Uniform Resource Locator
2.6.5 Unique Identifier
2.6.6 Version
2.7 Security Properties
2.7.1 Public Key
2.7.2 Key Type
2.8 Miscellaneous Properties
2.8.1 Extensions
2.9 Formal Definition
Section 3 : Internet Recommendations
3.1 Recommended Practice with SMTP/MIME
3.1.1 Text/Plain Content Type
3.1.2 Text/X-vCard Content Type
3.1.3 Application/Directory Content Type
3.2 Recommended Practice with HTTP/HTML
3.2.1 Form Element Usage
3.2.2 Mapping To INPUT Element Attribute Names
3.2.3 Example HTML Code
Section 4 : UI Support Recommendations
4.1 File System
4.2 Clipboard
4.3 Drag/Drop
Section 5 : Conformance
Section 1 : Introduction
[DS2]
Personal Data Interchange (PDI) occurs every time two or more individuals
communicate, in either a business or personal context, face-to-face, or across
space and time. Such interchanges frequently include the exchange of informal
information, such as business cards, telephone numbers, addresses, dates and
times of appointments, etc. Augmenting PDI with electronics and
telecommunications can help ensure that information is quickly and reliably
communicated, stored, organized and easily located when needed.
Personal information, by nature, is complex and diverse. Currently, proprietary
standards exist to structure some types of PDI information, but no single, open
specification comprehensively addresses the needs of collecting and
communicating PDI information across many common communication channels such as
telephones, voice-mail, e-mail, and face-to-face meetings. versit is developing
a comprehensive family of PDI technologies based on open specifications and
interoperability agreements to help meet this technology need.
Overview
This specification defines a format for an electronic business card, or vCard.
The format is suitable as an interchange format between applications or systems.
The format is defined independent of the particular method used to transport it.
The transport for this exchange might be a file system, point-to-point
asynchronous communication, wired-network transport, or some form of unwired
transport.
A vCard is a data stream consisting of one or more vCard objects. The individual
vCard definitions can be identified and parsed within the datastream. The vCard
data stream may exist as a persistent form in a file system, document management
system, network connection between two network endpoints, or in any other
digital transport that has an abstraction of a stream of bytes.
Conceptually, a vCard Writer creates vCard data streams and a vCard Reader
interprets vCard data streams. The vCard Reader and Writer may be implemented as
a single application or as separate applications. It is not the intent of this
specification to define the implementation of these processes beyond some
fundamental capabilities related to the format of the vCard data stream and a
common set of conformance requirements .
This specification provides for a clear-text encoding that is intended to be
based on the syntax used by the MIME specification (RFC 1521).
The encoding of this specification can be used in environments which are
constrained to 7-bit transfer encodings, short line lengths, and low bandwidth.
In addition, the encoding is simple in order to facilitate the implementation of
reader and writer applications on small platforms, such as Personal Digital
Assistants (PDA), cellular telephones, or alphanumeric pagers.
Scope
The vCard is intended to be used for exchanging information about people and
resources. In today's business environment, this information is typically
exchanged on business cards. It is appropriate, then that this specification
define this information in terms of a paradigm based on an electronic business
card object.
The ultimate destination for this information is often a collection of business
cards, Rolodex® file, or electronic contact manager. Prior to the introduction
of the vCard specification, users of such applications typically had to re-key
the original information, often transcribing it from paper business cards. With
the advent of the vCard specification, this information can be exchanged in an
automated fashion.
The basis for the data types supported by this specification have their origin
in openly defined, international standards and in additional capabilities based
on enhancements suggested by the demonstration of the exchange of prototypical
vCards using the Internet based World-Wide-Web, Infra-red data transport, and
simultaneous voice and data (SVD) modems.
The "person" object defined by the CCITT X.500 Series Recommendation for
Directory Services was the primary reference for the properties that are defined
by this specification. Every attempt was made to make it possible to map the
X.520/X.521 attributes and objects into and out of an instance of a vCard. The
vCard specification has extended the capabilities that have been defined within
the CCITT X.500 Series Recommendation to allow the exchange of additional
information often recorded on business cards and electronic contact managers.
For example, this specification provides support for exchanging graphic images
representing company logos, photographs of individuals, geo-positioning
information, and other extensions to properties defined by the X.500
Recommendation.
The specification of all date and time values are defined in terms of the ISO
8601 standard for representation of dates and times. ISO 8601 supersedes all
other international standards defined at the time this specification was
drafted.
The paradigm of an electronic business card is related to the concepts of an
entry in a LAN/WAN directory or an electronic mail address book or distribution
list. However, the requirements of the electronic business card go beyond the
definitions of a "person" object found in either the CCITT X.500 Series
Recommendation, network directory services, or electronic mail address book
products. The vCard specification is needed to address the requirements for an
interchange format for the "person" personal data type or object.
Personal data applications such as Personal Information Managers (PIM) often
provide an import/export capability using Comma Separated Value (CSV) or Tab
Delimited Files (TDF) formats. However, these solutions do not preserve the
intent of the originating application. When a CSV and TDF format is used by a
PIM, the meta-data or semantics of the originating object are only apparent to a
similar version of the originating application. Exchange of data between such
applications is another important application of an industry-standard
specification for an electronic business card interchange format, such as the
vCard specification.
Contents
This specification is separated into eight sections:
* "Section 1 : Introduction" introduces PDI and the vCard specification with
an overview, scope statement and section on definitions and abbreviations.
* "Section 2 : vCard Specification" defines the semantics and syntax for the
vCard.
* "Section 3 : Internet Recommendations" specifies a set of guidelines to
facilitate the exchange of vCard objects over Internet protocols such as HTTP
using HTML and SMTP using MIME.
* "Section 4 : UI Support Recommendations" specifies a set of guidelines to
facilitate the exchange of vCard objects at the desktop user interface using the
file system, clipboard and drag/drop capabilities of the operating system.
* "Section 5 : Conformance" defines minimum conformance requirements to
consider while developing support for this vCard specification.
Definitions and Abbreviations
Definitions and abbreviations used within this specification follow.
Electronic Business Card: Also known as vCard.
FPI: Formal Public Identifier. A string expression that represents a public
identifier for an object. FPI syntax is defined by ISO 9070.
GUID: Globally Unique IDentifier
Internet: A WAN connecting thousands of disparate networks in industry,
education, government, and research. The Internet uses TCP/IP as the standard
for transmitting information.
ISO: Organization for International Standardization; a worldwide federation of
national standards bodies (ISO Member bodies).
MIME: Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, as defined in RFC1521.
PDA: Personal Digital Assistant computing device
PDI: Personal Data Interchange, a collaborative application area which involves
the communication of data between people who have a business or personal
relationship, but do not necessarily share a common computing infrastructure.
PIM: Personal Information Manager
RFC#### documents: Internet "Request For Comment" documents (i.e., RFC822,
RFC1521, etc.).
URL: Uniform Resource Locator; a string expression that can represent any
resource on the Internet or local system. RFC 1738 defines the syntax for an
URL.
UTC: Universal Time Coordinated; also known as UCT, for Universal Coordinated
Time.
vCard: The generic term for an electronic, virtual information card that can be
transferred between computers, PDAs, or other electronic devices through
telephone lines, or e-mail networks, or infrared links. How, when, why, and
where vCard are used depends on the applications developed utilizing a vCard.
versitcard: a vCard.
WAN: Wide-Area Network
Section 2 : vCard Specificiation
[DS3]
This section defines the semantics and syntax for the vCard.
A vCard is a collection of one or more properties. A property is a uniquely
named value. A set of properties can be grouped within a vCard. For example, the
properties for a telephone number and comment can be grouped in order to
preserve the coupling of the annotation with the telephone number. In addition
to property groupings, a vC. versit is developing a comprehensive family of PDI
technologies based on open specifications and interoperability agreements to
help meet this technology need.
Overview
This specification defines a format for an electronic business card, or vCard.
The format is suitable as an interchange format between applications or systems.
The format is defined independent of the particular method used to transport it.
The transport for this exchange might be a file system, point-to-point
asynchronous communication, wired-network transport, or some form of unwired
transport.
A vCard is a data stream consisting of one or more vCard objects. The individual
vCard definitions can be identified and parsed within the datastream. The vCard
data stream may exist as a persistent form in a file system, document management
system, network connection between two network endpoints, or in any other
digital transport that has an abstraction of a stream of bytes.
Conceptually, a vCard Writer creates vCard data streams and a vCard Reader
interprets vCard data streams. The vCard Reader and Writer may be implemented as
a single application or as separate applications. It is not the intent of this
specification to define the implementation of these processes beyond some
fundamental capabilities related to the format of the vCard data stream and a
common set of conformance requirements .
This specification provides for a clear-text encoding that is intended to be
based on the syntax used by the MIME specification (RFC 1521).
The encoding of this specification can be used in environments which are
constrained to 7-bit transfer encodings, short line lengths, and low bandwidth.
In addition, the encoding is simple in order to facilitate the implementation of
reader and writer applications on small platforms, such as Personal Digital
Assistants (PDA), cellular telephones, or alphanumeric pagers.
Scope
The vCard is intended to be used for exchanging information about people and
resources. In today's business environment, this information is typically
exchanged on business cards. It is appropriate, then that this specification
define this information in terms of a paradigm based on an electronic business
card object.
The ultimate destination for this information is often a collection of business
cards, Rolodex® file, or electronic contact manager. Prior to the introduction
of the vCard specification, users of such applications typically had to re-key
the original information, often transcribing it from paper business cards. With
the advent of the vCard specification, this information can be exchanged in an
automated fashion.
The basis for the data types supported by this specification have their origin
in openly defined, international standards and in additional capabilities based
on enhancements suggested by the demonstration of the exchange of prototypical
vCards using the Internet based World-Wide-Web, Infra-red data transport, and
simultaneous voice and data (SVD) modems.
The "person" object defined by the CCITT X.500 Series Recommendation for
Directory Services was the primary reference for the properties that are defined
by this specification. Every attempt was made to make it possible to map the
X.520/X.521 attributes and objects into and out of an instance of a vCard. The
vCard specification has extended the capabilities that have been defined within
the CCITT X.500 Series Recommendation to allow the exchange of additional
information often recorded on business cards and electronic contact managers.
For example, this specification provides support for exchanging graphic images
representing company logos, photographs of individuals, geo-positioning
information, and other extensions to properties defined by the X.500
Recommendation.
The specification of all date and time values are defined in terms of the ISO
8601 standard for representation of dates and times. ISO 8601 supersedes all
other international standards defined at the time this specification was
drafted.
The paradigm of an electronic business card is related to the concepts of
aQuoted-Printable lines of text must also be limited to less than 76 characters.
The 76 characters does not include the CRLF (RFC 822) line break sequence. For
example a multiple line LABEL property value of:
123 Winding Way
Any Town, CA 12345
USA
Would be represented in a Quoted-Printable encoding as:
LABEL;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:123 Winding Way=0D=0A=
Any Town, CA 12345=0D=0A=
USA
Property parameter substrings are delimited by a field delimiter, specified by
the Semi-colon character (ASCII decimal 59). A Semi-colon in a property
parameter value must be escaped with a Backslash character (ASCII 92).
Compound property values are property values that also make use of the Semi-
colon, field delimiter to separate positional components of the value. For
example, the Name property is made up of the Family Name, Given Name, etc.
components. A Semi-colon in a component of a compound property value must be
escaped with a Backslash character (ASCII 92).
Grouping
There are two forms of grouping or collections supported within the vCard. A
collection of vCard objects can be grouped and a collection of properties within
an individual vCard can be grouped.
vCard Grouping
The vCard data stream can consist of multiple vCard objects. The vCard data
stream can, sequentially, contain one or more vCard objects., In addition, the
vCard data stream can contain a property whose value is a nested vCard. In both
of these cases, each vCard object will be delimited by the vCard Delimiters. The
vCard Reader conforming to this specification must be able to parse and process
any of these combinations of vCard Groupings. The support for vCard Grouping is
optional for a vCard Writer conforming to this specification.
Property Grouping
A Property Grouping is the definition of a method for specifying a collection of
related properties within a vCard object. There is no requirement on a vCard
reader that it preserve the property group name. However, the vCard reader is
required to preserve the grouping of the properties.
The Property Grouping is identified by a character string prefix to the property
name; separated by the Period character (ASCII decimal 46).
The grouping of a comment property with a telephone property is shown in the
following example:
A.TEL;HOME:+1-213-555-1234
A.NOTE:This is my vacation home.
The vCard Reader conforming to this specification must be able to parse and
process the property grouping. The support for Property Grouping is optional for
a vCard Writer conforming to this specification.
Encodings
The default encoding for the vCard object is 7-Bit. The default encoding can be
overridden for an individual property value by using the "ENCODING" property
parameter. This parameter value can be either "BASE64", "QUOTED-PRINTABLE", or
"8BIT". This parameter may be used on any property.
Some transports (e.g., MIME based electronic mail) may also provide an encoding
property at the transport wrapper level. This property can be used in these
cases for transporting a vCard data stream that has been defined using a default
encoding other than 7-bit (e.g., 8-bit).
Character Set
The default character set is ASCII. The default character set can be overridden
for an individual property value by using the "CHARSET" property parameter. This
property parameter may be used on any property. However, the use of this
parameter on some properties may not make sense.
Any character set registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)
can be specified by this property parameter. For example, ISO 8859-8 or the
Latin/Hebrew character set is specified by:
ADR;CHARSET=ISO-8859-8:...
Some transports (e.g., MIME based electronic mail) may also provide a character
set property at the transport wrapper level. This property can be used in these
cases for transporting a vCard data stream that has been defined using a default
character set other than ASCII (e.g., UTF-8).
Language
The default language is "en-US" (US English). The default language can be
overridden for an individual property value by using the "LANGUAGE" property
parameter. The values for this property are a string consistent with RFC 1766,
Tags for the Identification of Languages. This property parameter may be used on
any property. However, the use of this parameter on some properties, such as
PHOTO, LOGO, SOUND, TEL, may not make sense. Canadian French would be specified
by this parameter by the following:
ADR;LANGUAGE=fr-CA:...
Value Location
The default location of the property value is inline with the property. However,
for some properties, such as those that specify multimedia values, it is
efficient to organize the property value as a separate entity (e.g., a file out
on the network). The property parameter "VALUE" can be specified to override the
"INLINE" location of the property value. In the case of the vCard being
transported within a MIME email message, the property value can be specified as
being located in a separate MIME entity with the "Content-ID" value, or "CID"
for short. In this case, the property value is the Content-ID for the MIME
entity containing the property value. In addition, the property value can be
specified as being located out on the network within some Internet resource with
the "URL" value. In this case, the property value is the Uniform Resource
Locator for the Internet resource containing the property value. This property
parameter may be used on any property. However, the use of this parameter on
some properties may not make sense; for example the Version, Time Zone, Comment,
Unique Identifier, properties . The following specifies a value not located
inline with the vCard but out in the Internet:
PHOTO;VALUE=URL;TYPE=GIF:http://www.abc.com/dir_photos/my_photo.gif
SOUND;VALUE=CONTENT-ID: Fill out this form and we'll
create a Versitcard for you and send it to the email address of your
choice,
along with more information on the Versitcard format.Create Your Own Versitcard
Section 4 : UI Support Recommendations [DS5] When integrating vCard support into an application, an implementor needs to consider a number of user interface (UI) implications. Most appliss Type ADR.x TYPE=CHECKBOX. Separate input elements are used to capture the possible delivery types. The elements are named ADR.x, where x is one of the enumerated strings defined by the vCard specification. Delivery Label LABEL Label Type LABEL.x TYPE=CHECKBOX. Separate input elements are used to capture the possible delivery types. The elements are named LABEL.x, where x is one of the enumerated strings defined by the vCard specification. Telecommunications Addressing Properties Description Attribute Name Comment Telephone Number TEL Telephone Type TEL.x TYPE=CHECKBOX. Separate input elements are used to capture the possible telephone types. The elements are named TEL.x, where x is one of the enumerated strings defined by the vCard specification. Electronic Mail Address EMAIL Electronic Mail Address Type EMAIL.Type Selection option from a list of alternatives. Mailer MAILER Geographical Properties Description Attribute Name Comment Time Zone TZ Geographic Position GEO Organizational Properties Description Attribute Name Comment Title TITLE Business Category ROLE Logo LOGO Only the URL based specification is supported by this mapping. Value is the URL for the graphic. Logo Format Type LOGO.Type Where the value is one of the enumerated strings defined by the vCard specification. Agent Captured through a separate form element using the mapping defined in these tables. Organization ORG TYPE=TEXT. Separate input elements for the organizational name and unit. The name ORG.Name is used to capture the organizational name. The name ORG.UNIT is used to capture the organizational unit. If there are multiple organizational units, it is captured in a form with name attributes ORG.UNIT1, ORG.UNIT2, etc. Explanatory Properties Description Attribute Name Comment Comment NOTE TYPE=TEXT Last Revision REV A hidden field. Version VERSION A hidden field with the value set to the string ì2.1î. Language LANG A hidden field with the value set to the string associated with the default language used in the form (e.g., US-eng). Sound SOUND TYPE=TEXT Sound Type N/A Uniform Resource Locator URL TYPE=TEXT Unique Identifier UID TYPE=TEXT Binary Encoding BE.x Where x is one of the enumerated encoding types defined by the vCard specification. Security Properties Description Attribute Name Comment Public Key KEY Key Type KEY.Type.x Where x is one of the enumerated encoding types defined by the vCard specification. MISCELLANEOUS PROPERTIES Extensions X-x Where x is a string defined by the extension author. Where multiple properties (e.g., telephone numbers) appear, a label prefix should be used. For example, telephone #1 might have a name attribute of ìA.TELî, telephone #2 might have a name attribute of ìB.TELî, etc. Example HTML Code The following HTML code is an example of the use of the mapping of INPUT element attributes names to vCard property names. The code can be used to capture input data for creating a vCard on a Web homepage.
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