[uf-discuss] Datetime design pattern

[Ciaran McNulty]

On 4/16/07, victor jalencas <victor at carotena.net> wrote:
>  Is the datetime design pattern strictly limited to the abbr element,
> or can it be used on other elements (like a list item for example).

Yes, it's limited to ABBR [1]

>  If so, what is the rational behind it? I'm not questioning it, just
> intend to fully grok it.

Some of Tantek's initial thoughts on the subject that led to the
agreement are on his blog [2]

The basic idea behind restricting it is that the use of @title on
arbitrary elements would be a form of data-hiding, which is not in the
spirit of microformats, whereas using ABBR makes sense if you view
things like '10am Monday" as an abbreviation for '10:00:00BST on
Monday 16th April'.

It would be nice, IMO, if the wiki linked to the relevant sections of
the mailing list, IRC logs and influential blog posts for decisions
like this.  It would help to explain a lot of the thinking behind
'controversial' decisions like the datetime design pattern, rel-tags
url scheme and a few other things that seem to cause puzzlement.

-Ciaran McNulty

[1] http://microformats.org/wiki/datetime-design-pattern#How_to_use_it
[2] http://tantek.com/log/2005/01.html#d26t0100