Instantly share genealogy among family
 family tree

vCard + vCalendar + XFN = microXFN

Genealogists have been using the GEDCOM standard to transfer their genealogy for years. There hasn't been such a standard to represent genealogy on the Internet, which can make searching for family information very frustrating. The micoXFN standard is a proposal to simplify searching for family and individual information.

microXFN diagram including vCard, vCalendar, and XFN relationship

vCard

You may have seen a vCard signature at the bottom of an email. This is a microformat that provides basic contact information. The information important to genealogist is the name and possible birthdate in the vCard. Usually vCards are used for living people, but they could be used to represent our ancestors.

vCalendar

Businesses have a standard way of scheduling calendar events through email and other systems. The main calendaring standard is vCalendar which is another microformat. A calendar event does not have genealogy value, but the format supports date and location values which could represent an individual's vital events. By placing Birth, Marriage, and Death vCalendar events inside a vCard, we have a good representation of a person.

XFN

Social networking has become very popular on the Internet. XFN is a standard way to refer to social relationships on blogs. Besides for the common relationships of friend and contact there are family relationships of parent, child, and spouse. The XFN relationships refer to web pages. For genealogy we can have web pages that represent our ancestors.

microXFN

We can add to the XFN standard and define two parent XFN within a Birth vCalendar represent a family. Also, a spouse XFN within a Marriage vCalendar represents a genealogy union. Combining the two microformats of vCard and vCalendar with the XFN format creates the microXFN format.