[VCARDDAV] Extensibility issues with <sex/> in vcard xml

Laurent Eschenauer <laurent@eschenauer.be> Tue, 13 April 2010 10:50 UTC

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From: Laurent Eschenauer <laurent@eschenauer.be>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2010 12:50:23 +0200
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Subject: [VCARDDAV] Extensibility issues with <sex/> in vcard xml
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Hi all, I'm the architect of http://onesocialweb.org, a decentralized social
networks built on top of XMPP and using vcard-xml as our data model for user
profiles. (For those who followed the story, we switched from PoCo to
vcard-xml recently). We have just encountered quite an annoying issue with
the sex field wrt our requirements and would like your feedback.

The great thing about the current vcard-xml spec is that field themselves
are namespace extensible. This enable us, for example, to add our own access
control rules to a field.

      <fn>
        <text>Romeo Montague</text>
        <acl-rule xmlns="http://onesocialweb.org/spec/1.0/">
         ....
        </acl-rule>
      </fn>


It works great, but for the sex field. Simply because the value is directly
the text content of the <sex/> element. I don't see how to extend that one
in a XML compatible way. So, why not also wrap that one in a <text/> or
<int/> or <value/> or whatever else element ?

      <sex>
        <gender>1</gender>
        <acl-rule xmlns="http://onesocialweb.org/spec/1.0/">
         ....
        </acl-rule>
      </sex>


What do you think ? Is this only a <sex/> problem or do you see other places
where this would be an issue too ?

Feedback on this would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

Laurent Eschenauer