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[VCARDDAV] Gender coding (was I-D Action:draft-ietf-vcarddav-vcardrev-07.txt)

Sly Gryphon <sgryphon@computer.org> Wed, 10 June 2009 10:58 UTC

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Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:58:48 +1000
From: Sly Gryphon <sgryphon@computer.org>
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Subject: [VCARDDAV] Gender coding (was I-D Action:draft-ietf-vcarddav-vcardrev-07.txt)
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In section 7.2.9 for the GENDER property, I recommend the coding from
ISO 5218:2004, "Codes for the representation of human sexes" be used to
represent gender, rather than the [English-] language-specific codes.

Rationale for change: Follow a recognised international standard for the
coding of the element, and avoid language-biased encoding.

Appropriate changes to the draft could be the following:

Type purpose: To specify the gender of the object the vCard represents,
encoded as a value from [SEX] (ISO 5218:2004).
Type value: A single integer value.
Type special notes: The attribute should have a single digit, with 0 =
Not known, 1 = Male, 2 = Female, or 9 = Not applicable. Any unexpected
values should be considered equivalent to 0.
ABNF:
                   param = "VALUE=text" / any-param
                   value = "0" / "1" / "2" / "9" / iana-token / x-name
Examples:  SEX:2

The normative reference of the codes (to understand the coding) should
be added (note that section 3 of the standard states the preferred
designation for use of the standard is "SEX"):
[SEX]    ISO 5218:2004, "Codes for the representation of human sexes".

Note that ISO 5218 is free, publically available standard from ISO,
available at
http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/index.html.
(The standard was first published in 1977)

You could also consider changing the property name to SEX (instead of
GENDER) -- vCard tends to prefer short property names.

Sly (Stephen) Gryphon

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