[Microformats-dev] ISO Dates

[Ryan King]

On Jul 19, 2005, at 8:35 AM, Tantek Çelik wrote:
> 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.

Ah, I've misread the spec. Apparently, you can only specify TZID's  
not timezone offsets. Why is it, then that we publish hCalendar with  
offsets? Why not allow TZID's?

> 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.

Sorry.

-ryan

>>> 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.