Subject: [Geopriv] Work on "geo-URI" style information in vcarddav

From: "Alexander Mayrhofer" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:23:20 +0100

I was attending vcarddav today, and one of the things they are currently
contemplating is the extension of the "ADR" property in a vCard to also
support a spatial coordinate pair, with a simple example looking like:

ADR;GEO=46.772673,-71.282945:;;2600 boul.
Laurier\, suite 625;Quebec;QC;G1V
4W1;Canada

Ignoring the semantical problems of mixing spatial/civic addresses, this
is yet another example where a simple compact representation of lat/lon
coordintes seems to be useful. I mentioned my work on the "geo" URI, and
over the course of the discussion, the following alternative example was
posted to the mailing list:

ADR;GEO="geo:48.2010,16.3695,183";PREF=1:XYZ;;;;;;

Note that besides the addition of the URI scheme identifier (and the
optional altitude in the example above), this is nearly identical to
what the vcarddav group came up with. So, this would be another use case
for the short, simple, but still semantically clear way to reference to
a spatial location. 

I think that if we provide clear definition and semantics for such a
"simple representation", it saves the developers of protocols / data
formats a lot of time, and also reduces the risk that there is
ambigiuity over the interpretation of fields (for example, some of those
"simple" formats in the wild still don't clarify which reference system
is supposed to be used). This would help in interobaility of such
"simple" lat/lon information.

I'd therefore like to ask the chairs and the WG to think whether
adoption as an WG item would be useful - There has also been already
some discussion regarding privacy parameters of the URI scheme - Alissa
and John, maybe you could give your view on what you'd like to see in
the URI scheme with regards to privacy? The vCard itself, for example,
is very much a "possession" model - i'm not aware of any privacy
indication in the vCard format as it is currently deployed.. 

Alex