[Microformats-dev] ISO Dates

[Tantek Ç elik]

On 7/19/05 8:01 AM, "Ryan King" <ryan at technorati.com> wrote:

> On Jul 19, 2005, at 5:26 AM, Brian Suda wrote:
> 
>> On the discuss list there has been so talk about ISO date formats.
>> Currently, X2V only supports Dates without the '-' seperators (which
>> is wrong and will be changed).
> 
> Good.
> 
>> X2V currently takes the date with a timezone and attempts to convert
>> it to a UTC date so that importing applications can adjust
>> accordingly. This is ALOT of work in XSLT, which i'm wondering if it
>> is needed at all?

Absolutely.  This is a requirement of iCalendar in particular.

That's why I asked you to do it in the first place ;)


> You wouldn't think so, as long as you send along the timezone with
> the date. Converting to UTC is actually a lossly transformation, b/c
> the timezone of a vevent is significant.

Ryan, before making assertions like that, consider reading affected
specifications, in this case, RFC2445 which specifically outlines *which*
ISO8601 dates are valid in iCalendar and which are not.


>> Maybe, instead of trying to convert things, i should just take exactly
>> what the user put as án 'iso date' and use that even if it is wrong.
>> Then let the importing application deal with it?

No, that would generate invalid .ics.


>> Is there a reason it should be attempting to convert all dates to UTC?
>> I figured i'd ask the list before making any changes.

See RFC2445.

> I can't think of a reason.

Absence of a reason isn't a good reason to take an action.

Thanks,

Tantek