[uf-discuss] datetime-design-pattern

[Tantek Ç elik]

On 10/31/05 10:59 PM, "Charles Iliya Krempeaux" <supercanadian at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> On 10/31/05, David Janes -- BlogMatrix <davidjanes at blogmatrix.com> wrote:
>> I've been mucking about with the datetime-design-pattern page [1]. If
>> you have a pretty good idea what the final consensus opinion for the
>> exact format, can you please add it in.
>> 
>> I've also added sections for "date", "time" and "duration" variants,
>> which I've noticed are poping up in other areas of discussion.
>> 
>> Regards, etc...
>> David
>> http://www.blogmatrix.com
>> 
>> [1] http://microformats.org/wiki/datetime-design-pattern
> 
> I skimmed the document, and it seems to imply that dates should always
> be encoded in YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss±ZZZZ format.
> 
> (Not sure if this has come up before, but) why not let the format be
> specified in the class attribute?  (With the default being iso8601.)
> For example:
> 
>   <abbr class="foo iso8601" title="20051031T23:01:31+0200">Halloween
> at 11:00:31 PM</abbr>

Ask the opposite question.

Why let the format be specified?

When in doubt, more flexibility/generality is usually worse.

Rather, microformats says the simpler solution (assuming ISO8601), is the
better one.

And that such infinite flexibility is an anti-pattern to be avoided.


>   <abbr class="foo rfc2822" title="Thu, 21 Dec 2000 16:01:07
> +0200">That day</abbr>
> 
> (Or maybe something like urn:rfc:2822 and urn:iso:8601 would be better.)

"Better" according to what value system?

Tantek