Precise Expansion Patterns (was: Re: [uf-discuss] Hcalendar in bbc.co.uk/programmes)

[Scott Reynen]

On Dec 14, 2007, at 12:21 PM, Ben Ward wrote:

> I am going to ask that we better define the problem. That we follow  
> up the demand for a better pattern (regardless of whether your  
> personal motivation is following the spec or assistive technology).  
> I'd like to ask that people stop jumping straight in with ideas for  
> alternative mark-up, ways of kludging the existing practice into  
> different elements or attributes. Follow the process. We need to  
> fully define the problem: We need a list of which microformat  
> properties _require_ the facility for precise representations. They  
> don't all need it


I think we should follow Ben's suggestion here.  We've already drifted  
into discussing solutions that are completely irrelevant to the actual  
problems we're seeking to solve (last I checked, there were no month- 
long songs in the hAudio examples).  It seems to me "3:23" is already  
machine-readable, so I think we made a mistake in looking for an  
alternate machine-readable way to represent that.  Rather than trying  
to fit it into the full complexity of ISO 8601, much of which is far  
outside the scope of this specific problem, I suggest we simply define  
the trivial process for reading a duration in that commonly published  
format.  We may not be able to remove the need for the <abbr> pattern  
altogether, but  identifying which properties actually require  
alternate machine-readable representations will at least help focus  
potential solutions.

Peace,
Scott