Re: Date/time tag??

Marc VanHeyningen <mvanheyn@cs.indiana.edu>
From: Marc VanHeyningen <mvanheyn@cs.indiana.edu>
To: eostrom@fiicmds04.tu-graz.ac.at (Erik Ostrom)
Cc: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Subject: Re: Date/time tag?? 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 02 Aug 1993 18:26:39 +0100."
             <9308021726.AA09597@iicm.tu-graz.ac.at> 
Date: Mon, 02 Aug 1993 13:09:04 -0500
Message-id: <3102.744314944@moose.cs.indiana.edu>
Sender: mvanheyn@cs.indiana.edu
Status: RO
Thus wrote: 
>  > Could I suggest the following form for within documents ?
>  >
>  > <date normalised="1993-05-01T15:30:00">May 1, 1993</date>
>
>  If we must have something inside the document (which I don't think we should
>)
>  then it should be in the same format as the Date: and Last-Modified: headers
>  in HTTP/1.0 (these fields are defined per RFC850 but must be GMT).
>
>I get the impression this suggestion is not for "the date of the document"
>(which I agree should not be inside the document) but for "how to include
>dates in documents in such a way that they're mechanically recognizable as
>dates" (which I think would be a useful type of semantic markup).
>
>I agree that date representation should be kept consistent (for the
>"normalised" version, although we'd be better off coming up with a name for
>that attribute that's spelled the same in English and American), and also like
>the idea of allowing a suggested textual presentation.

I'd agree; some mechanism for this kind of markup would have some
distinct advantages.  As a random example, with a spiffy browser and
appropriate hooks I should have been able to read an announcement
about the W^5, click a mouse button on the date, and had my electronic
appointment book pop up opened to that range of dates.

A couple things to think about...

- Dates frequently represent bounded intervals rather than a single
  point in time.  Should there be a way to represent "from 3:00 until
  8:00 PDT on 30 Nov 95" in these?
- Dates vary in terms of their quantity of significant "terms"; e.g.
  "November, 1993" should be representable and it's certainly not the
  same as "1 Nov 1993 00:00:00 GMT".

- Marc
--
Marc VanHeyningen  mvanheyn@cs.indiana.edu  MIME, RIPEM & HTTP spoken here