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

[Bob Jonkman]

This is what <microformats-discuss at microformats.org> said
about "Re: [uf-discuss] Formatting arbitra" on 7 Mar 2007 at 14:39

> From: James Craig
> 
> 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>

Nope...

> From: Paul Wilkins
>
> So it's not the date that's the relevant part, it's the software release 
> instead.


Erm, neither.  My usage isn't meant to refer to a change in the document in which it appears 
(ruling out the semantic use of <ins> and <del>), nor is it meant to refer to software 
releases in particular. Let me try again:

  <abbr title="2007-03-08">Today</abbr> I bought an old 
  newspaper from <abbr title="2006-07-02">2 July 2006</abbr>

These are arbitrary dates, NOT related to the publishing date of the document it appears in, 
not related to any resources such as a software release.  I simply want dates occuring within 
prose to be recognized as machine-readable dates.  This is for both for screen readers and 
disabiguation of dates such as 3/2/2006 or 02-03-06.  It's also useful when quoting text with 
poorly formatted dates, without altering the presentation of the original quote, eg.

  The Constitution of <abbr title="1776-07-04">4/7/76</abbr>

Andy Mabbett suggested a class of "dtstamp" which comes closer to what I intend, but the 
iCalendar property DTSTAMP is specifically meant to indicate when an iCalendar object was 
created, which is not the case here.


Following the design pattern for dates, I think we need a semantic classname such as 
"datetime" which James Craig pointed out is an attribute for <ins> and <del>

  <abbr class="datetime" title="2006-03-02">March 2, 2006</abbr>

Does such a classname for an arbitrary date/time already exist?  


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