[uf-discuss] Re: Precise Expansion Patterns

[Michael MD]

> This would be acceptable:
> <span class="duration"><span class="seconds">3</span> seconds</span>
>
> Or if we wanted to use the hMeasurement approach:
> <span class="duration" title="3s">three seconds</span>
> <span class="duration" title="2min 3s">two minutes, three
>                                         seconds</span>
> <span class="duration" title="2y 35h">two years, 35 hours</span>
> <span class="duration" title="3s">three seconds</span>
>

this kind of thing would:

1. add complexity to parsers
2. require people to be very precise in the choice of allowed strings ... 
eg: "year"  or "y" , "second" or "seconds" otherwise dates and times may 
very quickly degenerate into something not much better than garbled freeform 
text dates.
It would also mean a lot more rules for authors to remember which could 
result in a lot of invalid markup being published.
If dates/times are no longer machine-readable I would see no longer see much 
practical use for any of this!

I am very wary of straying too far from ISO for dates and times
(or at least something that can easily be parsed by 
javascript/php/perl/ruby/whatever built-in date functions or commonly used 
date libraries)

keep it simple !