[microformats-discuss] International date formats

[Sam Deane]

>> I do think there's something wrong from a user interface point of
>> view with having to roll over a date to get a tool-tip, just to see
>> the locally formatted date.
>
> No such requirement has been made.

Someone suggested it though - I was merely commenting on the suggestion.


> One of the principles of microformats is to adapt to current  
> behaviors, and
> *minimize* the changes we ask of publishers, in order to lower the  
> barrier
> to adoption as much as possible.

Fair enough. Personally I think you can remain true to that principle  
whilst giving good advice about how to use the microformat. I was  
talking about recommendations not requirements. Perhaps even  
"recommend" is too strong a word though.


>> but there are also lots of cases where the exact
>> representation chosen doesn't matter very much,
>>
>
> I've yet to see this actually.  From a human readability  
> standpoint, the
> visible representation is very important.

With relative dates, and dates in general in pure prose, I think you  
are right. But there are plenty of places where lists of dates are  
presented on the web (event lists or search results for example), and  
places where dates are displayed as meta-data tagging some prose  
(creation and modification dates on blog posts for example). In these  
cases the choice of representation often appears to be arbitrary and  
parochial, and it wouldn't do any harm to make people aware of the  
issues.