[uf-dev] Human and machine readable data format

[Glenn Jones]

What I was suggesting is that the date in the title of abbr be in a
fixed format, but also human readable. The text of the abbr tag could
any format the author wanted.

If a date in the did not comply to the fix format in any way it would be
completely rejected by the parser  

The format I suggested, has enough data to not be ambiguous. 
Date: 25 January 2008
Date: 25 January 2008 at 15:30 
Date: 25 January 2008 at 15:30, Time zone +1:30

Under this pattern if someone created the following 
<abbr class="dtstart" title="Date: 25 January 2008">Jan 25 08</abbr>
<abbr class="dtstart" title="Date: 25 January 2008">Two weeks
Monday</abbr>
they would be converted into 2008-01-25

If they got the format wrong in the title attribute
<abbr class="dtstart" title="Date: 25th January 2008">Jan 25 08</abbr>
It would be rejected.

We would have internationalise the scheme so 
<abbr lang="fr" class="dtstart" title="Date: 25 janvier 2008">Jan 25
08</abbr>
Would also parse correctly 

What I am suggesting is exchanging the title attribute from ISO format
to a human readable format, not freeform text.


Glenn



-----Original Message-----
From: microformats-dev-bounces at microformats.org
[mailto:microformats-dev-bounces at microformats.org] On Behalf Of Michael
MD
Sent: 30 June 2008 11:12
To: A list for people developing tools with microformats.
Subject: Re: [uf-dev] Human and machine readable data format

> The idea is that the parsers read the lang attribute on the abbr and
> applies the correct language description. It will be a pain to build
up
> all the international descriptions needed, but it's the only way if we
> wish to have human readable date's that can be parsed by machines.
>

and what do we do about people who write something like "25th January"
when 
they really mean "25th January 2008" ?

I think we have opened a nasty can of worms here!

Some libraries for parsing dates will assume that it is this year....
which 
is VERY bad
... it should be rejected as being ambiguous.



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