[uf-discuss] human readable date parsing

[Tantek Ç elik]

On 5/3/07 1:14 PM, "Jon Gibbins (dotjay)" <dotjay at november5th.net> wrote:

> Tantek Çelik wrote:
>>> and is not apparent to human readers
>> 
>> To be clear, this clause, in the absolute, is undesirable.  That is, in
>> following the principles of microformats, the date needs to be at least
>> somewhat *visible* to humans, rather than invisible.
> 
> I still don't understand this part. Why would the ISO date need to be
> visible to users/humans? Does 'visible to humans' *really* equate to
> 'will definitely be available to parsers'?

'visible to humans' does equate to more accurate, more up-to-date data.

It is bad enough that we are violating DRY by putting the same information
in twice.  The only justification for violating DRY in this case is the high
principle of humans first, machines second.

To minimize the negative impact of that violation, the datetime design
pattern does two things:
 1. Keep both copies of the data on the same element (the further apart two
copies of data, the greater the chance that that copies will diverge).
 2. Keep both copies of the data at least somewhat visible to humans so that
at least *some* human eyes/ears can easily inspect both copies and ensure
that they have not diverged.

Tantek