[uf-discuss] Formatting arbitrary dates, not part of hCalendar

[James Craig]

  Bob Jonkman wrote:

> Hi all:  Today I had the urge to mark up an arbitrary date, not one  
> that is part of
> an hCalendar event, eg.
>
>   Use version 7.0.2 from <abbr title="2007-03-05">5 March 2007</span>
>
> This is to provide some standarization in presenting dates, but  
> keep them human-
> readable in arbitrary format.
>
> dtstart and dtend aren't appropriate semantic classes in this  
> example.  Is there a
> proper microformat for arbitrary dates?

In this case, I think what you are looking for is the 'datetime'  
attribute on INS and DEL elements.

     <ins datetime="2007-03-05">5 March 2007</ins>

This has nothing to do with microformats; it's just semantic HTML. It  
specifies the time of the insertion or deletion, so I think it's  
quite appropriate for specifying when a version was released.

 From the HTML 4 DTD attribute list for INS or DEL.

     cite        %URI;          #IMPLIED  -- info on reason for  
change --
     datetime    %Datetime;     #IMPLIED  -- date and time of change --

Given that, you might also want to specify the URI for version changes.

     <ins cite="/whatsnew/7.0.2/" datetime="2007-03-05">Use version  
7.0.2 from 5 March 2007.</ins>

Opinionated rant: ins[datetime] has the added benefit of not sounding  
like absolute dreck in the more popular screen readers, which is more  
than one can claim for the Datetime Design Pattern.

James