Re: Date/time tag??

Marc VanHeyningen (mvanheyn@cs.indiana.edu)
Mon, 02 Aug 1993 15:14:35 -0500

Thus wrote:
>So, suppose we allow for leaving out sections:
>
> <date at="1993">1993</date>
> <date at="Nov 1993">this month</date>
> <date at="1 Nov 1993">the first of November, 1993</date>
> <date at="1 Nov 1993 00:00:00">midnight</date>
>
>Length of field is enough to distinguish between these.

Something kind of like that probably could work, though arguably
including so much varying info within just one variable is contrary to
the SGML philosophy, but the following sort of format doesn't make me
feel warm and fuzzy either:

<DATE YEAR=1993 MONTH=11 DATE=1 HOUR=00 MINUTE=00 SECOND=00
TZ=GMT>midnight</DATE>

>I think we could consider this a special case of your first point:
>
> <date at="1 May 1993">Mayday</date>
>
>is in some sense the same as
>
> <date at="1 May 1993 00:00:00" until="2 May 1993 00:00:00">Mayday</date>
>
>On the other hand, this looks both ugly and ambiguous to me at first glance.

The key distinction to me is one of time zones; presumably at least
some browsers will translate times (I assume the above times are GMT)
into local time, in which case it would (for me, being 5 hours behind
GMT) come out to

30 April 1993 19:00 until 1 May 1993 19:00

which doesn't seem like what is meant by "The 1st of May." Obviously
any time that isn't at least as specific as hours shouldn't be
translated by time zone.

- Marc

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