Syntax Style Differences

The vobject data format has two "versions", which vinnie refers to as "old-style syntax" and "new-style syntax". They are similar, but not identical. The table below describes the differences.

Description	Old-style (vCard 2.1 and vCal 1.0)	New-style (vCard 3.0/4.0 and iCal 2.0)
Newlines in property values	Encoded newline sequences are not allowed in property values. A workaround is to encode the property value in quoted-printable encoding.	Newlines can be encoded as \n.
Folding whitespace	Multiple whitespace characters can be used at the beginning of a line to denote that it is a continuation of the previous line.	Exactly one whitespace character must be used at the beginning of a line to denote that it is a continuation of the previous line.
Whitespace in property syntax	Any whitespace surrounding the = character that separates a parameter name from its value should be ignored. Similarly, any whitespace surrounding the : character in BEGIN and END properties should also be ignored.	Such whitespace should be treated as part of the value (however, spaces are technically not allowed to be part of property or parameter names according to the specifications).
Nameless parameters	Parameter values that are unambiguous can be specified without a name. For example: NOTE;QUOTED-PRINTABLE instead of NOTE;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE.	All parameters must have names.
Multi-valued parameters	Each value must be specified as an individual name/value pair. For example: ADR;TYPE=HOME;TYPE=PARCEL.	Values can be specified in a comma-delimited list. For example: ADR;TYPE=HOME,PARCEL.
Escaped characters in parameter values	Semicolon characters are escaped with a backslash (\;). No other character can be escaped.	If a parameter value contains characters that have meaning in the syntax (i.e. commas, semicolons, or colons), the value must be enclosed in double quotes. For example: ADR;LABEL="123 Main Str, Apt: 2B".
Characters permitted in groups, property names, and parameter names *	Any printable, 7-bit ASCII character except: []=:.,;	-, 0-9, A-Z, a-z
Characters permitted in parameter values *	Any printable, 7-bit ASCII character except: []=:.,	Any printable character except: ".

* vinnie is lenient about character validation. vinnie allows all characters to be written except those that break the syntax.