[uf-discuss] Expressing an event that only has an end date?

[Ara Pehlivanian]

> I want to use vevent to markup this information.  Notice that there is
> only one date specified - May, 1998 - which is the ending date of his
> education.
>
> How do I markup a date such as "May, 1998"?  Notice that there is no
> day specified.  Do I assume it to be May 1, 1998, and mark it up as
>
> <abbr class="..." title="1998-05-01">May 1998</abbr>

I think that the idea that there's no ending date is a deceptive one.
More often than not there is a start and end date but we choose to use
a natural language abbreviation instead, like "May, 1998". In actual
fact the classes started on a particular date like "September, 1994"
and ended on "May, 1998". And if you really want to get granular, you
can put in the exact time you walked into your first class too.

I used to work for a Festival and we had this very same issue
concerning a lot of the date information. There were events that
"started at 6PM" and had no end time, and other events that were for
the "Fall/Winter" season. But if you dig deeper and ask the right
questions, you soon find out that "yeah it starts at 6PM and it goes
for 2 hours" so the ending time is 8PM, and "the Fall season starts on
such-and-such a date and goes on to such-and-such a date".

In the case where a particular time isn't given, I think it's alright
for it to simply default to midnight of those days.

Where I have a particular problem with end dates is marking up events
that go on indefinitely. What do you do then?

A.