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 losing any semantics during conversion. 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 .

Updated Properties

ADR Property This specification modifies the definition of the "ADR" property. It extends its structured value with additional address components to better support the variety of international addresses. It separates the address parts that currently typically are combined in street address component values into distinct components, such as street names, street numbers, apartment numbers, floors. Implementations SHOULD write a combined value of these components in the street address component for backwards compatibility, but SHOULD ignore it during read if applicable new component values are available. The following change is made to the first paragraph in the "Special Notes" section, originally specified in . All remaining paragraphs of that section in the original specification still apply.

Special notes:: The structured type value consists of a sequence of address components. The component values MUST be specified in their corresponding position. The structured type value corresponds, in sequence, to
the post office box;
the extended address (e.g., apartment or suite number);
the street address;
the locality (e.g., city);
the region (e.g., state or province);
the postal code;
the country name (full name in the language specified in );
the room or suite number or identifier
the apartment number, extension designation or box number.
the building floor or level;
the street name;
the street number;
the building, tower, condominium;
the block name or number;
the subdistrict;
the district;
the landmark or another publicly known prominent feature that can substitute the street name and number, e.g., "White House"", "Taj Mahal"";
the cardinal direction or quadrant, e.g., "North"

The following change is made to the definition of "ADR-value" in the "ABNF" section, originally specified in .

ABNF

New Properties

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):

DEFLANGUAGE Property

Property name:: DEFLANGUAGE
Purpose:: This property defines the default language 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 LANGUAGE parameter MUST NOT be assigned to this property.
Description:: This property defines the language in which property values of type TEXT shall be assumed to be written for this vCard. If a vCard property includes the LANGUAGE parameter, then the parameter value has higher precedence than the DEFLANGUAGE property value.
Format definition:: This property is defined by the following notation:
Example(s):

GRAMGENDER Property

Property name:: GRAMGENDER
Purpose:: This property defines which grammatical gender to use in salutations and other grammatical constructs.
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 in written or spoken form. For example, the German language distinguishes by grammatical gender in salutations such as "Sehr geehrte" (feminine) and "Sehr geehrter" (masculine). Multiple occurrences of this property MUST be distinguished by the LANG parameter.
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 if 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 values in the same vCard.
Description:: This property parameter SHOULD be specified on an property if the property value is derived from some other properties in the same vCard. 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 by use of the FMT parameter. It indicates this fact by setting the DERIVED parameter on the FN property to true.
Format definition:
Example(s):

FMT Parameter

Parameter name:

FMT

Purpose:

This parameter defines how to form a TEXT value from the components of a structured property value.

Description:

The N and ADR properties use structured value types to define the constituent components of a name or address. In contrast, the FN property and LABEL parameter contain full names or addresses as a single TEXT value, which might redundantly redefine the information in their structured value counterparts and bears the risk of their values going out of sync. Instead, implementations should be guided how to form a full name or address of a given N or ADR property. This is what the FMT parameter aims to achieve. In addition to the component values, it also allows to define what values implementations SHOULD insert in between components, such that the resulting name or address is formatted appropriately and locale-specific. The FMT parameter value is a structured type value. It consists of a sequence of formatting instructions, where a formatting instruction defines what value to concatenate to the result TEXT value. There are two kinds of formatting instruction:

A positional. This instructs to concatenate to the result the value of a structured property component value at a specified position. A position consists of a numeric index of a component in the structured value, optionally followed by a COMMA (U+002C) character and the index of a value within that component. The zero index selects the first component or value, respectively. The second index by default is zero, in which case it MAY be omitted, otherwise it MUST NOT be omitted. If a positional instruction contains a position of a non-existent or empty component value, then the entire FMT parameter MUST be considered invalid and MUST be ignored.
A separator. This instructs to concatenate to the result a verbatim value defined in this formatting instruction. It starts with the LATIN SMALL LETTER S (U+0073) character, followed by COMMA (U+002C), followed by zero or more param-value characters, where the COMMA (U+002c) and SEMICOLON (U+003B) character MUST be escaped according to the rules defined in .

The first entry in the sequence of formatting instructions either MUST be the empty string or it MUST be a separator formatting instruction. If the first entry is a separator formatting instruction, then this defines the default separator value to insert in between the values indicated by two consecutive positional formatting instructions. Any separator formatting instruction in later entries has higher precedence than this default separator. If the first entry is the empty string, the default separator is undefined and implementation-specific. The FMT parameter value either includes exactly one separator formatting instruction for the default separator, or an optional default separator followed by at least one formatting instruction (see Format definition). Some implementations might not support the FMT parameter. For backwards compatibility, implementations SHOULD generate the FN property based on the N property and FMT instructions. In this case, they SHOULD set the DERIVED parameter on the FN property. They MAY generate a LABEL parameter for the ADR property.

Format definition:

Example(s):

The following examples demonstrates how to generate the same value as the FN property value using the FMT parameter. The first format instruction defines a single SPACE (U+0020) character as default to separate two component values. The next format instructions select the first value of the second component of the N property value (the given name), followed by the first value of the first component in the N property value (the surname). where the positions can be reduced to shorter form An implementation may decide to not explicitly define a default separator. Assuming that the implementation uses space to separate name components, the FMT parameter value would then be for example: The following example demonstrates how the honorific suffix could be preceded by the SEMICOLON (U+003B) and SPACE (U+0020) characters.

PROP-ID Parameter

Parameter name:: PROP-ID
Purpose:: This parameter identifies a property among all its siblings of the same property name.
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):

USERNAME Parameter

Parameter name:: USERNAME
Purpose:: To define a user name, such as the user of a messaging or social media service.
Description:: This parameter MAY be specified on a IMPP or SOCIALPROFILE property to name the user with that property value. Its value is case-sensitive, its letter cases MUST be preserved. The IMPP or SOCIALPROFILE value type MUST be URI.
Format definition:
Example(s):

New Values

Billing Address Type Value

Value:: billing
Purpose:: This indicates to use this address for billing, e.g., to send invoices to.
Conformance:: This value can be used with the "TYPE" parameter applied on the "ADR" property.
Example(s):

Delivery Address Type Value

Value:: delivery
Purpose:: This indicates to use this address for delivery, e.g., to send packages to.
Conformance:: This value can be used with the "TYPE" parameter applied on the "ADR" property.
Example(s):

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

IANA Considerations

Changes to the "vCard Properties" registry

New property definitions 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
	CREATED	This document,
	DEFLANGUAGE	This document,
	GRAMGENDER	This document,
	PRONOUNS	This document,
	SOCIALPROFILE	This document,

Updated vCard properties IANA is requested to add of this document as reference for the ADR property.

Changes to the "vCard Parameters" registry 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,
	FMT	This document,
	DERIVED	This document,
	PROP-ID	This document,
	SERVICE-TYPE	This document,
	USERNAME	This document,

Changes to the "vCard Property Values" registry 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
GRAMGENDER	animate	This document,
GRAMGENDER	common	This document,
GRAMGENDER	feminine	This document,
GRAMGENDER	inanimate	This document,
GRAMGENDER	masculine	This document,
GRAMGENDER	neuter	This document,

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

Property	Parameter	Value	Reference
ADR	TYPE	billing	This document,
ADR	TYPE	delivery	This document,