[uf-discuss] human readable date parsing

[Breton Slivka]

This is a very difficult problem. Difficult problems need as many  
potential solutions as possible to be presented- The more solutions,  
the more chance of arriving at a good one. The tricky part here is  
creating a solution which is in line with common usage.

It seems to me that by basing hcalendar on a single existing format,  
then expecting it to conform to some wider sense of principles  
concieved well after that format was created- It's a bit counter  
productive. the ISO date format itself does not fall in line with  
common usage, unless you consider the iCalendar format- posted in the  
raw on an html page to be common, or any ISO date.

So basically we are presented with a number of restrictions, which  
define the range of possible solutions. It seems to me that in order  
to more effectively solve this problem, this set of restrictions  
should be clarified- Here's what I've got so far, correct me if I'm  
wrong.


Date markup must:

1> be capable of marking up dates from multiple cultures and languages
2> Follow the DRY principle
3> Be completely visible
4> Follow common usage
5> Be machine readable
6> Be unambiguous

and the unstated (and perhaps unconcious) restriction

7> Be as similar to iCalendar as possible in form and function.

At least two of these restrictions conflict. Most obvious is number 4  
and 6.

Common usage is frequently ambiguous, so we should perhaps  
acknowledge that a microformat that marks up a date is going to  
either force common usage to be unambiguous (By requiring the  
inclusion of a year in all dates)

Or instead, allow ambiguity through sophisticated (or  
unsophisticated) guessing on the part of the parser. If this course  
is taken, this process of guessing should be documented and standardized

Or, violate restrictions 2 and 3, which is the current solution.


So, are those all the restrictions? In order to arrive at a solution,  
at least one of them must be violated- are we violating the right one?

Here's my contribution to the solutions pool. Violate number 7. Example:

   July 26th, 2005

<span class="vmonth">July</span> <span class="vday">26</span>th,  
<span class="vyear">2005</span>

This solution is certainly more verbose, but note that it follows all  
restrictions except for 7.

Which restrictions do you want to violate?