vCard Format Extension for JSContact

Introduction The JSContact format aims to be an alternative to the vCard format for representation of contact and address book data. As such, it introduces new semantics that are not covered in the current definition of vCard and its various extensions. Converting contact data between the two formats is defined in with the goal of not loosing any semantics during conversion. In order to do so, this document defines a new set of properties for vCard and extends existing definitions.

Notational Conventions The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.

ABNF Notations The ABNF definitions in this document use the notations of . ABNF rules not defined in this document either are defined in (such as the ABNF for CRLF, WSP, DQUOTE, VCHAR, ALPHA, and DIGIT) or .

New Properties

CONTACT-CHANNEL-PREF Property

Property name:: CONTACT-CHANNEL-PREF
Purpose:: This property defines which channels the entity associated with this vCard prefers to be contacted with.
Value type:: A single text value, restricted to an enumerated list of allowed values.
Cardinality:: *
Property parameters:: The PREF parameter defines the preference of this contact channel in relation to other contact channels. The TYPE parameter defines when to use this preference.
Description:: This defines an order of preferences for contact channels. The contact channels supported in this specification are phone numbers, email, instant messaging and postal delivery. They are identified by the name of the respective vCard property.
Format definition:: This property is defined by the following notation:
Example(s):

CREATED Property

Property name:: CREATED
Purpose:: This property defines the date and time when the vCard was created
Value type:: A single timestamp value.
Cardinality:: *1
Property parameters:: VALUE
Description:: This is the time stamp when the vCard was created. Copying the vCard across systems does not count as a new creation, nor does a new revision. Instead, the time stamp value typically stays unchanged for the existence of the vCard.
Format definition:: This property is defined by the following notation:
Example(s):

GRAMMATICAL-GENDER Property

Property name:: GRAMMATICAL-GENDER
Purpose:: This property defines the grammatical gender that shall be used to address the entity represented by this vCard.
Value type:: A single text value, restricted to an enumerated list of allowed values.
Cardinality:: *
Property parameters:: LANG
Description:: This property defines the grammatical gender that the contact prefers to be addressed by or referred at. Multiple occurrences of this property MUST be distinguished by the LANG parameter. Many human languages use grammatical genders in salutations and other language constructs. For example, the German language typically distinguishes between the grammatical gender of the recipient in salutations. The allowed values for this property aim to cover grammatical genders for the majority of human languages. This specification registers an initial list of allowed values at the IANA vCard Property Values Registry, but this may be extended later.
Format definition:: This property is defined by the following notation:
Example(s):

LOCALE Property

Property name:: LOCALE
Purpose:: This property defines the default locale that human-readable text values in this vCard should be assumed written in.
Value type:: A single Language-Tag value as defined in .
Cardinality:: *1
Property parameters:: The LANG parameter MUST NOT be assigned to this property.
Description:: This property defines the locale in which property values of type TEXT shall be assumed to be written for this vCard. If a vCard property includes the LANG parameter, then the parameter value has higher precedence than the LOCALE property value.
Format definition:: This property is defined by the following notation:
Example(s):

PRONOUNS Property

Property name:: PRONOUNS
Purpose:: This property defines the pronouns that shall be used to refer to the entity represented by this vCard.
Value type:: A single text value.
Cardinality:: *
Property parameters:: LANG, PREF, TYPE
Description:: This property contains the pronouns that the contact chooses to use for themselves. The value is free-form text. These pronouns shall be used when addressing or referring to the contact. Multiple occurrences of this property MAY define pronouns for multiple languages, preferences and contexts. Multiple pronouns in the same language SHOULD use the PREF parameter, otherwise the order of preference is implementation-specific.
Format definition:: This property is defined by the following notation:
Example(s):

SOCIALPROFILE Property

Property name:: SOCIALPROFILE
Purpose:: To specify the URI or username for social media profiles associated with the object the vCard represents.
Value type:: A single URI or TEXT value. The default value type is URI.
Cardinality:: *
Property parameters:: The SERVICE-TYPE parameter MUST be assigned to this property if the value type is TEXT, it MAY be assigned if the value type is URI. In either case, it MUST NOT be assigned more than once.
Description:: Several vCard address book implementations currently use an experimental X-SOCIALPROFILE property to store social media profiles for contacts. This specification provides an IANA-registered property for the same purpose. In addition to the typical use of this property with URI values, it also allows setting usernames for social media services as free-text TEXT values, in which case the service name MUST be provided as a parameter. Names MUST be considered equal is they match case-insensitively.
Format definition:: This property is defined by the following notation:
Example(s):

New Parameters

AUTHOR Parameter

Parameter name:: AUTHOR
Purpose:: This parameter identifies the author of the associated property value.
Description:: This parameter MAY be set on any property where conveying authorship is desired. It identifies the author as a URI . Since every valid URI includes the COLON (U+003A) character, the parameter value MUST be quoted. Note that as an alternative or in addition to this parameter, the AUTHOR-NAME parameter allows naming an author as free-text value (see ).
Format definition:
Example(s):

AUTHOR-NAME Parameter

Parameter name:: AUTHOR-NAME
Purpose:: This parameter names the author of the associated property value.
Description:: This parameter MAY be set on any property where conveying authorship is desired. It names the author as a free-text value. The parameter value MUST NOT be empty. Implementations MUST take care to quote the name part, if otherwise the part would not be a valid param-value (see ). Note that as an alternative or in addition to this parameter, the AUTHOR parameter allows identifying an author by URI (see ).
Format definition:
Example(s):

CREATED Parameter

Parameter name:: CREATED
Purpose:: This parameter defines the date and time when a property was created in a vCard.
Description:: This parameter MAY be set on any property to define the point in time when the property was created. The value MUST be a valid TIMESTAMP value as defined in . Generally, updating a property value SHOULD NOT change the creation timestamp.
Format definition:
Example(s):

DERIVED Parameter

Parameter name:: DERIVED
Purpose:: This parameter specifies that the value of the associated property is derived from some other property value or values.
Description:: This property parameter MAY be specified on any property when the value is derived from some other property or properties. When present with a value of true, clients MUST NOT update the property. For an example, an implementation may derive the value of the FN property from the name components of the N property. It indicates this by setting the DERIVED parameter on the FN property to true.
Format definition:
Example(s):

RANKS Parameter

Parameter name:: RANKS
Purpose:: This parameter specifies a ranking among the name components of a vCard N property value.
Description:: The RANKS parameter on an N property assigns a rank among the same-typed name components of an N property value. Some cultures assign ranks to name components, such as a first and a second surname, or people might prefer to go by their second given name. But the N property value does not allow inferring a culturally or otherwise significant rank from the order in which same-typed name components are stored in it. The parameter value is structurally equivalent to the multivalued N property value: ranks of different name component types are separated by semicolon, ranks among the same name component types are separated by comma. The rank is an integer number larger than or equal to 1 and indicates the first or nth rank. Its location within the RANKS parameter value ranks the name component value at that same position within the N property value. An empty or absent rank indicates that the rank of its related name component value is undefined. If the RANKS parameter is set, its value MUST NOT be the empty string.
Format definition:
Example(s):: This example assigns ranks to two surnames. The culturally first surname is Rodriguez but it appears at the second position in the N property. Accordingly the RANKS parameter assigns rank 1 to the second entry in the surname name component. It also assigns rank 2 to the first entry in the same name component. It does not assign any rank to the personal name or any other name components.
Example(s):: This example assigns ranks to both the surname and personal name components. The writer "Dame Mary Barbara Hamilton Cartland" published most of her work under the "Barbara Cartland" and this is reflected in the ranks. The RANKS parameter assigns rank 1 to the second entry in the surname name component. It leaves the rank of "Hamilton" undefined. Similarly, it assigns rank 1 to the second entry in the personal name component and leaves "Mary" unranked. There is no rank assigned to the honorific prefix "Dame".

PROP-ID Parameter

Parameter name:: PROP-ID
Purpose:: This parameter identifies a property among all its siblings of the same type.
Description:: This parameter uniquely identifies a property among all of its siblings with the same name within a vCard. A valid PROP-ID value must be of 1 and a maximum of 255 octets in size, and it MUST only contain the ASCII alphanumeric characters (A-Za-z0-9), hyphen (-), and underscore (_). The identifier only has the purpose to uniquely identify siblings, its value has no other meaning. If an application makes use of PROP-ID it SHOULD assign a unique identifier to each sibling property of the same name within their embedding component. The same identifier MAY be used for properties of a different name, and it MAY also be assigned to a same-named property that is not a sibling. Resolving duplicate identifier conflicts is specific to the application. Similarly, handling properties where some but not all siblings have a PROP-ID is assigned, is application-specific.
Format definition:
Example(s):: ]]>

SERVICE-TYPE Parameter

Parameter name:: SERVICE-TYPE
Purpose:: To define the online service name associated with a messaging or social media profile.
Description:: This parameter MAY be specified on a IMPP or SOCIALPROFILE property to name the online service associated with that property value. Its value is case-sensitive, its letter cases MUST be preserved. Several vCard address book implementations currently use an experimental X-SERVICE-TYPE parameter. This specification provides an IANA-registered parameter for the same purpose.
Format definition:
Example(s):

Security Considerations This specification extends the vCard Format Specification. The same security considerations as outlined in apply.

IANA Considerations IANA is requested to add the following entries to the "vCard Properties" registry, defined in Section 10.3.1. of . New VCARD Properties

Namespace	Property	Reference
	CONTACT-CHANNEL-PREF	This document,
	CREATED	This document,
	GRAMMATICAL-GENDER	This document,
	LOCALE	This document,
	PRONOUNS	This document,
	SOCIALPROFILE	This document,

IANA is requested to add the following entries to the "vCard Parameters" registry, defined in Section 10.3.2. of . New VCARD Parameters

Namespace	Parameter	Reference
	AUTHOR	This document,
	AUTHOR-NAME	This document,
	CREATED	This document,
	DERIVED	This document,
	PROP-ID	This document,
	RANKS	This document,
	SERVICE-TYPE	This document,

IANA is requested to add the following entries to the "vCard Property Values" registry, defined in Section 10.3.4. of . New VCARD Property Values

Property	Value	Reference
GRAMMATICAL-GENDER	animate	This document,
GRAMMATICAL-GENDER	common	This document,
GRAMMATICAL-GENDER	feminine	This document,
GRAMMATICAL-GENDER	inanimate	This document,
GRAMMATICAL-GENDER	masculine	This document,
GRAMMATICAL-GENDER	neuter	This document,