Re: HTML tags in org, name, etc

["Paul E. Hoffman" <phoffman@xxxxxxx>]

At 11:00 AM -0700 7/11/97, Jeremy Gaither wrote:
><P>I have gotten into this argument before, and I really believe that
>ANY information interchange format should be able to use document and
>text control.  In other words, if people are going to use vCard, then
>programs using vCards should be able to parse HTML information OUT when
>it is not needed (such as a mailing list, database view, etc), but it
>should be USED when viewing the card.

Well, if there was only one display format, that might be reasonable, but
there are many. You expecting a vCard displayer to be able to unambiguously
determine which display format (HTML, rich text, RTF, PostScript...) is
used and strip them intelligently. That is assured to lose data in the real
world.

>If all business cards look the
>same, then what makes you pick one over the other.

The content.

Again, I want to emphasize that the vCard standard says nothing about
formatting, and it does so for a very good reason: it is a content exchange
mechanism, not a display format. If a vCard displayer wants to add smarts
by bolding personal names and so on, that's fine, but it is not part of the
standard and shouldn't be.

--Paul E. Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium